Upcycled Window Chalkboard Valentine #3

HAPPY VALENTINE's DAY.  Today I will be spending the entire day at the St Joseph Antique Show.  My husband was kind enough to do Valentine CHALKBOARD #3 for this special event.  (Click here to see #1 and here to see #2)

Remember to hug your sweetie.

Upcycled Window Chalkboard Valentine #2

A few days ago my husband surprised me.   I came downstairs one morning to find Valentine chalkboard #1 (click here to see #1) looking back at me.  The windows started out as a roadside rescue (click here to see that blog.) No surprise when I took #1 into my booth and it sold immediately.  It took about a week for me to beg and plead (and bake) my husband into doing Valentine chalkboard #2.  He took it into my booth on his way to work yesterday, without any photo documentation. 

So I took a few pics of it today on my way to do errands -- and glad I did -- it sold a few hours later.

Two more window chalkboards left.  I'll have to do some major baking (I'm thinking carrot cupcakes with cream cheese icing) to get a chalkboard ready in time for the St-Joseph-MO-Antique-Show&Vintage-Market over Valentine's weekend.

Upcycled Window Chalkboard Valentine

So, in December my true love gave to me: seven old windows.  Three sold over the Christmas season and I hadn't gotten around to doing another design on one yet.  Well, my husband surprised me with one this week. 

Yeah, he used to be an art teacher.

Can you tell?

Of course I am still selling it,

but I got to enjoy it for awhile.

My True Love Gave To Me: SEVEN OLD WINDOWS

My husband is a great one for roadside rescues.  I think it has something to do with his penny-pinching ways.  A couple weeks ago he managed to get SEVEN of these in his little car.  They were kind of big and plain so I considered pricing them and throwing them in my outside booth "as is".  But they did have great green chippy paint.. I thought about making one into a chalkboard...so you might as well do an assembly line.

They were very dirty and they had to be cleaned inside the house because of the cold weather.   Which means a lot of the dirt ended up on my floor, which I also had to clean. 

Each window received an old metal handle and two other rusty adornments on the top.  I faithfully screwed each little thing on, because I HATE it when glued-on trinkets fall off.

Each window received three coats of chalkboard spraypaint (after I painted the first one with chalkboard paint and I realized it would take forever for 7x3 to dry).  This meant I had to tape them off, which was a pain.  But not as much of a pain as dashing out in 20 degree temps to spraypaint each window three times.

I was determined not to purchase anything for this project, so not all of the hangers match.  So some received chains, some rusty wire. 

Primed all with chalk.  Decided to just create three with chalkboard Christmas artwork.  That way I can wait until after the holidays to sell the others.

Roadside Rescue -- Drop Back & Punt PART II

I won't go into all that happened on Part One of the rescue.  Let's just say it was not pretty.  Part Two would probably be considered the punting segment of this project. 

This is the dresser in it's original condition. 

Ironically, the original finish would have looked just fine with the burlap drawers.

 

But now, I am stuck with a hammered pewter finish. 

Face-palm.

 

I painted on two coats of English Gray Chick chalkpaint (which actually looks more tan than gray).

I tried a little distressing, but ditched that idea because it seemed to bring out some yellowish hues.

The burlap was very hard to trim once the mod podge stuff was dry.  But the drawers fit closely to each other, so it had to be pretty precise.  I also had several sessions of supergluing different areas.

 

I spent ANOTHER $7.95 on more spraypaint for the handles -- this time wanting them to be more brown.  So altogether I spent about $30 and a lot of time and frustration on this "free" dresser.

 

Roadside Rescue -- Drop Back & Punt PART 1

What to do with a 6'x4' mid-century blown up photo of a lonely stretch of highway somewhere in Kansas?  Buy it and wait for inspiration to strike. 

Hmm, if I had a fairly flat fronted dresser I could decoupage a good section of the photo onto the front.  Last Friday I passed on a cheap one at an auction because of lack of storage space.  While holding my quivering bidding hand down I reasoned that spring would be a much better time to tackle such a project.  Then my husband came home a couple days later with a roadside rescue that was the perfect mid-century flat-front dresser.  Hard to argue with free.

Today truly was the last nice day of 2014.  65 degrees.  It goes downhill from here.  Time to conquer the dresser.  Quick overall sanding with new orbital sander.  I had bought hammered pewter spraypaint ($7.95ish) to cover the pulls and knobs.   I painted the dresser a dark gray to coordinate with b&w photo. 
I didn't like it. 

So I sprayed the whole dresser with the hammered pewter spraypaint.  WHAT WAS I THINKING?
Maybe in a few decades I will be able to laugh about this particular step.

I decided to give myself a break and decoupage one of the drawers while I considered my options.  It was at this point that I realized the paper photo was not just taped on the back to a piece of fiberboard, but it was glued on.  If I had access to a fancy electrical saw I may have taken heart.
Now I was stuck with a hammered pewter dresser for no reason? 

I had purchased a jar of decoupage stuff just for this project ($6.95ish) and by golly I was going to decoupage TODAY!  But what was I going to use to decoupage?  Daylight was fading fast on the LAST NICE DAY OF THE YEAR.  I frantically ran inside and grabbed a huge burlap coffee bag with a green stripe.  Nice and neutral at least.  I slapped a layer of faux mod podge down on the first drawer front and applied the burlap.  The burlap slurped up the glue and showed no sign of adhering.  I painted the top of the burlap with the fmp.  A little better adhesion.  Then I saturated the front of the drawer completely with a ton of fmp.  Hard to tell what was going on under the thick white mess. 

I realized I was not going to have enough fmp at this rate.  So I added an equal portion of water.  I am slopping the mixture all over the other three drawer and pieces of burlap.  At some point I realize that I do not have enough burlap to completely cover the bottom drawer.  Are you kidding me?  I will have to make do.  It was pretty dark by the time I finished and got everything picked up. At least I can let the sticky stinky drawers sit out all night.  I was half way done wolfing down my first meal of the day at 6 pm when my husband came back early from his run -- because it was raining.  The wet sticky stinky drawers are now inside dripping on to newspapers.  This is where it ends for now.  Sometimes it is best to call it a day.