21 Day of Farmhouse Style Crafting: Week One

Country Design Style is a blog I have followed for a while.  Jeanette came up with a fun idea of a 21 day crafting challenge, with some really cute ideas for DIYing.

So here we go with the first week's projects.

Day One...

Find an old frame and 'deconstruct' it, in the order of those chairs you are seeing at Restoration Hardware.  We were to sand it down however much we wanted to achieve a timeworn look.

Here's my sanded down frame.

I didn't take a whole lot off, mainly the high gloss and a bit of the relief.

At this point it is ready to lean against a wall or to be a frame over a frame or just about anything you'd want.

Day Two...

Go to a thrift shop and find an unpainted wood item.

OK, I have no need to go to a thrift shop because I have a nice stash at home; like this bird house.

Day Three...

Add twine to something.

Something like my sanded down frame.  Instead of the usual 'clothes line' pattern or zigzag I did a plaid pattern.  Where the twine crosses is woven in a basket pattern.

Now I have a unique photo display frame.

Day Four...

Get a white plate and paint on it.

This was just the push I needed to try painting on plates.  But since I'm by no means a drawing artist, I had to copy something.  No problem with that as I have dozens of cool simple line drawings saved on Pinterest.  The problem arose on how to transfer the image to the plate.

Regular carbon paper has too heavy of a residue.  I tried the 'rub the back of the drawing with a pencil and trace onto the surface' method.  Didn't work at all.  I just ended up with dirty hands.  I tried several stores looking for graphite paper and no luck.  

So I ended up cutting a stencil and tracing thru it onto my plate.  From there I filled in with a paint pen.

I love how it turned out!!

Day Five...

Alter some clothes pins.

I painted my clothes pins first.  Then I used image strips from a National Geographic travel catalog, picking photos with a good abstract design.  The pin on the left is of buildings in Scotland and the one on the right is a scarlet macaw wing.  On the back I glued a magnet strip cut from an advertising refrigerator magnet.  I knew those old calender magnets would come in handy!

Pretty cool, eh?  I plan on doing more.

Day Six

Make homemade chalk paint and paint something with it.

I had a container of a 'mistint' I bought at Lowes that was exactly the 8 oz the recipe calls for.  To that was added 2 T of baking soda mixed in 1/8th cup of warm water.

I've never used chalk paint before but so far I like it.

I painted an old bottle, then sanded off some of the paint to bring the texture of the bottle out.

Done for this project... but I have a plan to take it a bit farther along...

Day Seven...

Take our unpainted wood item from day two and paint it with chalkboard paint.

Didn't it turn out cute?  I mounted it to a piece of 'drift board' and will use it as in inside decoration.

I couldn't find (yet) my pieces of chalk to 'prime' the chalkboard with but I'll be writing such things on it when I do.

While I had the chalkboard paint out I did something for another project too.  You'll be seeing that one soon.

Week One was a blast!  Wait 'til you see what we did for Week Two...

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