Point #42- You Can Learn a Lot of Things From the Flowers

These flowers sing, yo.

This is one of the few “wedding crafts” I actually have completed and I thought I would share. Things are coming together pretty piecemeal, which is good considering we have no official date set for the shindig yet. But when the mood strikes me, I do whatever I feel like doing, much like life in general, and so here, view with amazement and wonder my musically themed roses.

Music is very important to me, and to my fiance’, and when I determined that I do not want the hassle of fresh flowers, nor the potential mess of dried/preserved ones, I chose to eschew the silk route and go with something a bit different. I have seen lovely tutorials for sheet music roses before, and as I often do, I gave it my own touch and created a very simple bouquet that is utterly and completely me. The only thing that would be more apropos would be if I could toot the damn thing like a clown horn and frankly there is still time.

Here is the basic rose tutorial. I just added a touch of paint to mine, lightly so as not to lose the obvious sheet music awesomeness of the roses. I used coral and light copper paints on three of them, and a darker copper wash on two, with a soft gold shimmer over all. First I painted them the desired colours, and then went outside and sprayed them down with a clear coat of spray paint. Then I swore blue buckets as the wind whipped the spray paint merrily into my eyes. Then I went inside and got annoyed with Josh for proposing to me and thus causing me to make roses and thus spray myself in the eyes. Whipped some floral tape around the scrawny little copper stems on which the roses are wrapped, wrapped all five stems together and piccolo! a bouquet! I wrapped the resulting single stem with a very pretty sage green satin ribbon and secured it with tiny sequin pins. A few more purple and green ribbons tied around the top of the stem and I have no more stupid bouquet to worry about. Well played, me.

See?

And…OOOOHH:

Pow!

These things would kick the crap outta Alice. I got ninja flowers.

***This post is part of The CraftyChica’s Valentine’s Day linky party!***

Point #32-Always Look Past a Bad Paint Job

Oh man, is there a lot of crap out there. I, like many fellow crafty types, like to troll the thrift stores to find treasures just waiting to have their potential unlocked. I found one such diamond in the rough at my local Goodwill: a tabletop cabinet that revealed itself upon getting it home and untaping the taped-shut doors to have a tiny set of drawers inside. Not even that tiny; they easily hold my makeup and other small items. But I digress…in very un-me fashion, I will leave off the thick wall of bloggy text and let my pictures and commentary do the talking on my latest project.

This is what I started with. I saw its awesome bones right away. The dreadful country nightmare of a paint job will HAVE to go, though.

When I bought it, it was taped shut and so I wasn’t sure if the inside was shelves or what, so I was really excited to get it home and find a tiny set of drawers inside. This would be a cool way to hide away makeup and other small items on my bureau. The horrific festival of suck continues on the inside paint job, however.

I assault your eyes with a view of both the inside and outside at once. You are welcome. And ack! with acking…the paint carnage wraps around both sides, too.

Oh my dear sweet Jesus…this thing does NOT want to take paint. Yes, I know sanding helps. No, I do not want to. It will take eight trillion coats to cover the grim jollity of the world’s tackiest cheer fest. I think dozens of My Little Ponies died painting this thing. I don’t know how, I just sense they did.

In spite of the fact that the original paint is still leering like an undead spector at me, I can already see improvement. My plans for the doors mean I can ease up on the frantic painting on those sections at least. This helps alleviate the “The hills, THE HILLS! The flowery, bloody, evil hills” that I keep muttering as I feverishly splash red paint about with terrified abandon.

Ok…the bad paint job has almost entirely gone away now. I am breathing more easily and the South Park episode “Christmas Critters” has ALMOST stopped flittering through my brain.

Drawer is painted copper, the sides are fully coated, and I know the door will soon be covered so thoroughly the scary romping cheermongers of doom will never escape that damn meadow. The door knobs are copper, too, and wanting a little extra detail up top (where formerly was seen a painted pink bow….a frightening, frightening bow) I stuck on a clear plastic self adhesive scrapbook detail and than splattered some copper paint on it.

Ha! Take that, frolicking hordes! I have covered the sylvan terror with sheet music (The Coronation Mass, same as the mirror I recently did) that has been aged with coffee and walnut ink. I decoupage it on the doors and the tiny piping voices of evil woodland creatures finally cease.

The little bun feet painted copper. A word about a couple of details: as horrible as the original paint job was, a couple of original bits were allowed to show through. The inside of the doors, for instance, went from a stark, uneven black and white stripe to a softer, more festive looking stripe reminiscent of a turn of the last century carnival or Moulin Rouge look. Very 19th century. It reminds me of carnival bunting or a lady’s walking costume, all striped silk and elegance. The round feet had a swirled design with that same feel, and I didn’t cover them quite as thickly to let that show through the copper.

The paper has been decoupaged on and a dry brushing of gold paint to make it shine more. It catches the light and adds to the luxe look I was going for. Suck it, flowery hills. The sides have also been dry brushed with a bit of gold/copper paint to help mask the last remnants of the first paint job, and the upper edges has likewise been kissed just a bit with the metallic paint.

Little drawers to hold my treasures.

And there we go. I realise that that super cute country look has its place. But sometimes it is time to step away from the Donna Dewberry “Peaceful Meadow” collection and let the developers take over.