Tray-ding Up

We had a surprise party in August for Tom's 40th birthdayand my aunt brought a tray of cheese and crackers. It was a dollar store tray that she was more than happy to leave behind. I decided that I would break out the mod podge and fancy it up. 

First I spray painted it with Tremclad "Anodized Bronze". 

I had gone to Goodwill to find some books to take apart and glue to the tray bottom.  But they were so pretty that I just couldn't. I went through my bookshelves and found an old Alfred Hitchcock collection that no one was ever going to read and randomly cut out some pages. 

My apologies now to the person that does finally decide to read it and will never know who-done-it. 

I cut the pages in half to make them easier to work with, then tea-stained them and applied them to the tray with watered-down mod podge. An excellent tip I read online was to glue them down randomly - don't work from one side to the other - otherwise you'll end up with them all on top at one end.

I was pretty darn happy with the effect. I even added a fall leaf for some colour and texture.

But then we went to the Leonardo da Vinci Workshop exhibition at the Ontario Science Centre (a must-see if you're in the Toronto area). I fell in love with the reproductions of his writings and drawings (also the lion and the self-supporting bridge). 

I found some copies online, sepia tinted them, and printed them out. This was so much more me. Always been more the science geek than the literature geek. 

But. But. Mod podge on printer paper is not a nice look. You could see right through the paper to the printed pages below. And it was a bit smeary. Thank goodness the original mod podge provided a barrierbecause I just scraped the new pages right off without damaging the pages below. I have no pictures of this fiasco. Be glad.

I sprayed on some clear coat to protect the paper and mod podge from moisture and heat. I stared at it for a while. I just wasn't happy with the tray colour. The grey was too primer looking for my liking.

Seriously, is this ever going to end? 

I carefully taped around the edges of the tray bottom with painters tape and then taped down a leftover paint roller bag (recycle! reuse!) to protect the bottom from overspray. 

I gave the tray a few coats of ORB (oil rubbed bronze). I tried Krylon this time instead of my usual Rustoleum. I think I like the Rustoleum better because it has more shimmer. But the Krylon is cheaper, so it's a toss-up.

When it was dry I pulled off the tape and was much happier with the result. There was a better contrast between the aged pages and the dark tray. Plus the paint colour is very close to the printing colour on the paper. 

I bought some black silk cord and hot glued it around the seam between the tray and the paper bottom. It gives it a nice finished look.

The pictures don't really do it justice as the ORB doesn't seem to reflect the light very much.

Here we are all done up for the holidays with some decorations.

 

Not-So-Cold Storage

We have a cold room in our basement.

It looks more like a bomb shelter.

It's musty, drafty, (and cold obviously) and we've never
really used it for its intended purpose. 
We're not really the canning preserves and stockpiling wine types.

We've barely used the room because of how bad

anything that is stored there ends up smelling.

It's been three years, so this fall we finally got around to insulating

and finishing it for regular storage.

This is what it looked like before.

Bare cement walls and exposed beams. And lots of dirt.

Didn't the builders do a fantastic job? Blech. 

Oh yeah, we also found one of these guys.  Double blech.

 The first thing we did was seal the cracks with spray foam. 

We pulled down the beams that weren't needed

and put in new support beams with joist brackets.

(You'll notice I say "we" a lot through this, but mine was more of a supervisory role.)

We sprayed the walls down with bleach and then painted

all of the cement with Kilz paint to provide a mildew barrier.

The room was framed in with 2x4s at the ends but we could only use
2x3s across the long walls because the walls were so warped.

We then insulated the two outer walls and the ceiling with fiber insulation.

It's ugly but it has a higher insulation value than the pink stuff.

Since it isn't going to be seen on a day to day

basis, we hung plywood instead of drywall.

And it made it easier to secure shelving to the walls.

We hung it sideways.

I think it just looks better.

We replaced the exposed bulb with two flushmount lights.

They're exterior lights but I liked the industrial feel of them.

We framed in the doorway with 1x6s and

installed the light switch on the other side of the doorway.
I really like the wider wood planks - it gives it a log-cabiny feel.

Wall to wall shelves were installed on the far end

to hold the Christmas decorations. 

 It's so nice to have a place to put them all now.

Before this we kept them in the furnace room

(so it feels a bit safer having moved the flammables out of danger).  

We reinstalled the Ikea shelves that were in there before

and secured them to the wall to keep them stable.
  

And we carpeted the floor. 

We just used an old 5x7 rug that the dog had chewed the edges of.

I can't believe how much the room holds.

And the room smells like fresh wood instead of fresh wouldn't. (See what I did there?)



Dryer Vent Turkey

While I was putting away the dryer vent pumpkins I made (tutorial here), I kept looking at how fat they were and thought one would make a terrific turkey centrepiece.

Here in Canada, even though we eat turkey for Thanskgiving, it's not really a focus for decorating.  More pumpkins, leaves, and corn. But I was convinced that that pumpkin looked like a turkey. So I bought some brown, orange, and yellow cardstock for the feathers and head.  I just free-handed a feather pattern and cut the shapes out in the brown paper. 

I then made the template smaller and cut more feathers out of orange.  Repeat for yellow. They aren't perfect (have you ever seen a turkey with perfect symmetry?) but if you had a Cricut or Silhouette you could do a much neater job. 

I glued the three different feathers to each other and then glued all six tri-coloured feathers together in a fan shape. I cut the head shape from orange paper (free-hand of course) and pinched the neck together a bit at the bottom to make it more 3-D. The beak is yellow cardstock just glued on. 

I drew some eyes (on the back of a paint chip) and glued that on too. I even added a red snood for authenticity. Sorry, I didn't take pictures of any of that.

I removed the cinnamon stick and moss from the pumpkin and hot glued the head and tail to the front and back. This was a little difficult as the pumpkin has wire ribs so there isn't much to glue to. 

Finally, I added some little feet at the end. 

And here's my chubby ol' turkey. 

The freehand shapes give him a homemade feel. Or emphasizes that I have the artistic skills of a third grader. I prefer the former.

I tried him out all over the house but he seemed happiest laying in the leaves and acorns.

Gobble, gobble!

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I'm linking up to these great parties this week!