Monday, March 24, 2008

I'm Still Alive

This poor little blog has been so neglected. I've been working hard over the last couple of weeks to schedule my life though, so my hope is that I'll start posting more to my little cellar here and give you some things to look at.

So some news before I get to the cool project I want to share with you. Have you been to ASB lately? There's so much cool stuff going on over there, you should really check it out. K&A Die Cuts sponsored the creative teams for a month, and they made some awesome projects with them. The digi store has also been going strong for a few months now. Be sure to check out the new kits that were just released so that you can get them on sale! Last but not least, we have a new newsletter, so that you never have to miss any of the fun stuff going on over there. It also has tutorials and inspiration in every issue, so you should go sign up!

Now... on to the cool project I want to share with you!

I was dollar store shopping this weekend and I came across this cool little set of spice drawers. It had a wood cabinet and six ceramic drawers that fit into small slots. It was neat, but pretty beat up; the white paint was stained and pretty nasty. The really bad thing was that the drawers were filled with these seriously icky candles. They smelled horrid, like an old man's cologne or what people used to smell like before bathing became popular. Just awful!

I thought it had potential, so I bought it.

The first thing I did was to take all of the drawers out and throw them in a 250 degree oven for about 20 minutes. That didn't melt the wax completely, but enough so that I could pull the candles out of them. My house smelled like Louis V's palace for the rest of the night. I should have waited until it warmed up outside so that I could open a window.

While the candles were melting I put a coat of blue paint on the cabinet. The nasty white just wasn't doing it for me.

Here's a picture of it at this stage.

before

I didn't take a picture of it before I started working because it was just too gross... Plus I forgot.

It looked good at this point, but it still hadn't met it's full potential yet. So I pulled out some vellum paper that I purchased at the last Leader Paper Sale (I don't buy anything full price), my white Staz-On pad, and a pretty flourish stamp. I stamped up the patterned vellum with white flourishes and attached it to the top and sides.

It was still missing something though, it was just a little too pristine with the fresh paint and pretty paper. My sanding block to the rescue! I roughed up the paint so that the white underneath showed through, and viola! perfect.

After

This is my new gorgeous set of spice drawers. They still need to have the final sealing coat put on them, but I have to wait for it to warm up a bit outside before I can do that.

I haven't decided what I'm going to do with them yet. Tiana thinks I should give them to her, but that's not going to happen. I may use it as a jewelry box, but I'm not sure.

And the moral of the story? Spend lots of time at the dollar store, and be sure to look past the gross exterior to the potential that lays hidden inside.

Hugs,

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