✥DIY Anthro Zinc Letter w/Foil✥

A few little issues at hand. We finally had a sunny afternoon- but alas it was too windy to spray paint off my third floor balcony. I currently have 5 unfinished projects around the living room and kitchen. This drives me crazy. I'm a "1 and done before you move on" type a gal.

Now, onward to a real, live, actual completed project.

Can you believe it?

Typography has been huge for awhile now. I bought this 12' cardboard B from JoAnn's almost a month ago. I originally planned on doing a moss covered PB inspired  look, but after sitting with the idea for awhile it didn't feel like me. I think I like to look at other people's, but it's not really something I love.
Does this ever happen to you? It's hard sometimes to see all these good ideas and then edit them down to what you would chose if you had to pay full price for it.

Longest intro ever, but I decided I wanted a metallic letter. Something that looks like steel, not fake paint steel. ;) Anthro has these sweet Zinc ones- prices range from 18-98 bucks.

There are several tutorials online for faux zinc painting-mostly a black or blue base with silver paint on top.

I wanted to experiment with something else.
I used aluminum foil, putting shiny side towards the cardboard and mod podged it on.

For a good final result you want to do the edges first and you want to make sure they are well adhered- no bubbles!
 As you can see, I did the top first and then the edges and did NOT like it. Fail!
So plan B- edges first, then top.


First: Put a sheet of foil, shiny side up, on a cutting board, then put the letter on top of that. Then cut around the letter with the knife. Remove the letter and carefully finish cutting through the foil wherever needed. Make sure you use a new blade and use a ruler for the straight portions to get a clean cut. You don't want the foil to crumple. I have heard from others that if you handle the foil a lot or if it's not cut out carefully then the end result won't look right.
  Once the foil letter is cut out, it can be laid on top of the cardboard letter. I sealed it with a coat of mod podge over the whole thing.

Note: if the aluminum foil was wrinkled from handling it or from cutting it out your results will look like an aluminum foil letter! NOT a zinc one!

I had some wrinkling when I applied the mod podge, a similar effect to when you use it with paper. This light wrinkling is fine and adds to the textured look of real zinc.

After the Mod Podge I wish I could say I was 100 percent stoked with the result, but at this point I thought it looked too plain.

I dry brushed a little black paint on- and then kicked myself. Did I just end up faux painting after all that?
Yuppers.

This is the end result.
Now I'm happy with it- amazingly, it does look like metal. That layer of mod podge changed the feel of the aluminum foil tremendously- in a good way!

If you go to the Anthropologie site and click on the zinc letters, then zoom in you can see the texture is very similar.

Yay!

Thanks for looking!
Can you believe all these features? I feel so lucky!


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DIY Crate & Barrel Mercury Glass Lamp

This lamp on the left was my dream lamp- the lamp on the right is my copy.
The inspiration comes from Crate & Barrel and I heart it big time. Too bad it's 239 buckaroos for ONE!
I searched high and lower for something even close to this gorgeous without success.
Then I was listening to Nate Berkus and heard hm say something about DIY mercury glass finish (this is pre-blog days). Umm, I had no idea this was possible- but there are several tutorials online like here and here .

So obviously I decided to make my own. I figured it would cost be $100 for two lamps. I planned to buy glass kitchen canisters (using two tall ones like these), lamp kits, a fancy pants drill bit and of course the mercury glass faux finish.

 

 But fate struck and I found these glass lamps at the thrift store.

I do not love the shape the same way I loved the square inspiration piece- but I thought it was worth a try, especially cause it's hecka cheap and will save me 50 big ones.

I really wish I would have looked a little bit closer at the metal portions of the lamp. Soooo rusty! Who would buy these? Picture my two thumbs pointing right at me, "this guy!"

Ugg.

The base of the lamp didn't just unscrew- the lamp had to be completely taken apart. If you run into this, it's pretty easy to figure out-but you want to start with these screws up at the top- the ones holding the wires to the lamp.

Just unscrew those and you should be able to start stripping all the pieces off. This is what I had when both lamps were completely deconstructed.

I sanded the heck out of all the rusty pieces and bought a special rusty metal primer. Honestly it was not my favorite- but at Walmart there weren't  a whole lot of options.

For the mercury glass look- you wanna buy Looking Glass spray paint. I found it at Robert's for $19 and at Michael's for $12. Not bad with the 40% coupon.

I used a tutorial myself- but here's the basics-

(1) Cover the outside of your piece of glass and tape it off

(2) Evenly spray water on the inside

(3) Do several light coats of spray paint
4)Depending on the amount of desired "chipping" either let it dry naturally- or wipe it while it's wet and a lot of finish will come off

(I let mine dry naturally as my inspiration doesn't look very "chippy".)

Now for the goods- THE TIPS. 

✴I used the spray paint outside and could not have been in more ventilated space and I thought I was gonna pass out. It is WAY WORSE that regular spray paint. Wear a mask!

✴I did at least five coats. I didn't wait over night to do them (who's patient enough for that?) but you should wait a few minutes between coats, or you WILL get drip marks. Mercury glass should not have those!

✴My FAVORITE Part: real mercury glass has gold, tan and even black show through when it wears.
I waited a day and then used gold craft paint on a sponge brush to paint over the mirror spray paint. The paint on the brush acted as a paint thinner and I was able to distress the finish exactly how I wanted.
I used it very lightly in some places, not at all in others, and then heavily in a few spots.Then finished up with a few dispersed spots of black.

 I have to say, I LOVE this touch! It made a huge difference!

I  have a pair of these lamps now...but need to work out the matching lamp shade thing! Remember this dirty, thirfted Restoration Hardware shade? I think that cleaning experiment worked pretty well.

Hope you guys liked this one-cause I sure did! Oh yeah, grand total came in at 30 for two lamps, paint and one shade- I figure I'll be done in another 15 or twenty dollars.

✥ Condo Cat's Backyard ✥

I really can't imagine that others will find this project helpful- but you just never know and it has been a HUGE success in our home.

First, a little background-
When Z and I were newlyweds and living in a small Hawaii apartment we got this cat- his name started out as Mother Freakin' Precious- because he was just so precious to us (and it was fun to have the Vet say it aloud.)
Now we call him Pud (no clue how that came about?) He is all things good about cats, but with none of the bad. He does not startle, he is not scared of strangers, he is not finicky, he's basically GREAT!

Everywhere else we've lived he's been an indoor cat allowed to go outside for the day. When he's not allowed out he becomes a melancholy, depressed and meows...A LOT. Sad. But we live in an area where he would be a kitty cat pancake if we let him outside so we can't. Instead, we gave him a peace offering. 

Without further adieu-Pud's condo backyard. We went to Lowe's looking for a huge planter. Something we could throw some dirt and sod into.  We ended up with the biggest barrel we could find. It was a little plain and didn't have holes for drainage- but we thought we could take care of that. We brought it home and drilled like 10 holes in the bottom. At this point we could already tell it was going to be a success. He was in kitty cat heaven!

 After a few days I decided it needed some sprucing up. I painted stripes of my favorite accent colors, using paint I already had around the house. First doing the blue and green, then the white.

I liked it, but felt it looked too perfect. I took some 220 grit sandpaper and distressed the edges. All the while Pud sat in his "backyard" while it was on the counter! Too funny! He's in love!

Honestly, we are in heaven with this project as much as he is. He never meows to go outside anymore, although he does meow to go on the deck. ;-)  He LURVES it, big time!

Pud was Featured!

All this for under 20 bucks (bucket, sod, dirt)!







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