Office Stool to Bistro Seating

With this being a long weekend, I lost track of the days and just realized I should be posting. How was your weekend? We packed in quite a lot - Tom built a railing for his parents' porch, we went bike riding, took a quick trip to Ikea (details later), delivered a vehicle, and visited with relatives. Today we rearranged the family room furniture, and then moved it all back where it started because it looked better before.

Whew! Plus today is our 7-year anniversary! We aren't really doing anything to celebrate today - in a couple of weeks we're going to Pennsylvania for an extended weekend so we'll celebrate then. Tom asked me this afternoon if I was ready to relax for a bit. My answer? "What's that?" Yeah, I have trouble sitting still.

I tried out some more freezer paper transfers this past week, but this time on wood. I have a little wooden stool that's been sitting in the corner of the craft room for years just waiting to be refinished. I forgot to take a before picture, but it looks something like this, except much more beat up.

target.com

I was just going to repaint the legs white, but at the last minute decided my craft room needed a pop of colour, so I looked over the colours I had on hand and chose a medium yellow.

I taped a plastic bag around the seat to keep it the natural wood colour and gave the legs a few coats of paint.

Once it was all dry, I quickly stained the seat with Rustoleum's Special Walnut. I just wipe it on with a cloth and then wipe it off again. That way I can control how deep the colour gets. Once the stain was dry I wiped on a few coats of watered down taupe paint, the same as I used here, here, and here. This gives the wood a greyish, aged look - without having to leave it out in the rain and sun for a month.

I found a graphic on line - this time a French charcuterie image that is quite popular. I edited the colours and then flipped the image in reverse and printed it on freezer paper. For a more in-depth tutorial, click here.

The only thing that is different when you're transferring to wood is that you don't have to dampen the surface first like you do with fabric. I learned this the hard way and had to wipe the first attempt off and start again. You just need to carefully place the image face down and rub the back of the paper all over to get an even transfer. Once the image had dried, I sealed it with several coats of matte acrylic coating.

What do you think? Don't you think it's something you might see in a bistro or coffee shop? I like that the colours are soft and the writing is muted, while still standing out from the otherwise neutral room.

Have you taken the freezer paper plunge yet?

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I'm linking up here this week!

Wrapping Paper Centre Facelift

Oh my gosh, after bragging about all the things I did last weekend I haven't had a minute this week to show them to you. This was my first month-end closing at my new job and apparently it's normal to stay until 8pm or later each night. I just come home each night and fall into bed. I'm looking forward to the weekend (a 3-day weekend for those of us in Canada!)

I'll try to sneak in a little post here before I pass out on the keyboard.

Many, many months ago I had the hubby build a wrapping paper organizer for me to corral all the paper and ribbon I had lying all over the place. Here's a refresher if you've forgotten, or if you're new in these here parts.

He built it exactly the way I asked him to and I loved it. For a little while. Up until around Christmas time when the roll of ribbon I wanted was always the one in the centre of the row - meaning I had to take half the ribbon off the dowel to get to it.

This is how the ribbon usually looked:

Actually, THIS is how the ribbon usually looked - because I was too lazy and annoyed to put it back up where it belonged:

I thought about it for a while and came up with a plan to make it more efficient. I removed the dowel and the hooks for the ribbon holder and had Tom build an angled shelf in its place. It's really just two pieces of wood - one across the back (not even completely necessary since it's against the wall) and one at the front that is angled slightly above horizontal, to keep the ribbon from rolling out.

We had already attached two little blocks to the front of the main pieces so that the ribbon dowel stood out further than the wrapping paper rolls, so it was just a matter of cutting the bottom corner off at an angle and attaching the "shelf". I've amassed so much ribbon in the last year that I had Tom build a shelf on the bottom too. The tissue paper hanging along the bottom wasn't really working for me anyway.

I puttied all of the screw holes and gave it a new coat of white paint. You'd never know that it was a re-vamp at all. And now all of my ribbon is easy to see and easy to get to. I'm a happy little crafter!

Here's a side by side so you can see the changes:

Not earth-shattering, but just a little tidier and user-friendly.

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I'm linking up here this week!

Vintage Footstool with Freezer Paper Transfer

You know how last weekend was a sit around, do nothing all day, weekend? Well, this weekend was the complete opposite. I didn't sit still for a minute. Right from when I got home from work on Friday, I jumped into projects. And actually accomplished 5 or 6 things. I'm pretty proud of myself for getting so much done.

One of my favourite things was recovering a small footstool we have. This stool was a gift from my aunt and I use it all the time. It sits under my desk and I prop my feet up so that my legs are at a more comfortable angle. It's a cute stool, very padded, but the fabric colours don't suit my taste any more. So off with its head! No really, everything stayed in place and I just covered over it.

(Sneak peek)

Here is the little sweetie before the facelift. The main colour is a yellow-tan with red and olive green stripes. As you can see, it's in really good shape and the top is very cushy.

I started by measuring up one side, across the top, and down the other side. All together it was 26" (adding a bit for the edges) so I cut a piece of pre-washed dropcloth into a big square 26 x 26. Do you use dropcloth as a fabric? I'm telling you, it's the best thing ever invented. The weave is tight, it can be dyed or printed on, and it's fairly water-resistant.

I draped the cloth over the stool, made sure it was centred, and pinned the corners down so that they fit tightly.

I then sewed along my pin lines and fitted the cloth back onto the stool.  It needed to be brought in a little bit at the bottom of each corner so I re-sewed the bottom half of each seam to be closer to the stool. Are you with me so far?

I then cut off the excess material on each corner, flipped the material right-side out, and pulled it back down onto the stool. You'll want it to fit very snugly. Now is the time to adjust your seams if you need to. You don't want to wait until you've started stapling and then realize it's too loose.

I removed the stool legs, and starting at a corner, folded over the material and stapled it down to the underside of the frame.

Most people recommend starting in the center of each side when you're stapling, but I was able to get it to lie flatter when I started at  the corners. Once all four corners were stapled down, I stapled along the sides, folding the material under to get a nice finished edge. I then screwed the legs back on.

Flip it over and see what you've got! Isn't that a beauty? I could have stopped there, but oh no, there was more fancify-ing to come!

I searched on the internet and found a graphic that I liked. It's a french style soap ad that may or may not be authentic. I saved the image, tinted it brown and increased the contrast, then flipped it in reverse. (PicMonkey is great for that if you don't have other editing software. I have Photoshop but for something like this I find PicMonkey faster.) I printed it on freezer paper, like I've shown you before, and then pressed the image onto the top of the stool and rubbed it all over with a flat object (in this case the side of the tape dispenser) to make sure it was evenly applied.

You'll want to dampen the fabric first, but just slightly damp - if it's too wet your image will bleed into the fabric. Not all of the lettering is legible, but the main words are and that's good enough for me! Those kind of imperfections just make it look worn and original.

The sides seemed a little plain so I took a piece of brown satin ribbon, folded it in half lengthwise and sewed it together along the long side. I measured around the stool with the ribbon, marked where the two ends should meet and sewed them together. I then slid the ribbon down around the stool like an elastic band, making sure that the long seam was facing inside towards the stool and not showing. The seam that joins the ribbon ends will show, but if you wiggle the ribbon until that seam is on top of one of the corner seams no one will even notice. Did I say "seam" enough? Seam, seam, seam!

And there you have it. Wasn't that simple? And now my stool has a new life. 

I'm linking up here this week!