Shabby Old Window

Moving cross-country with only what can fit in your car trunk is no easy feat. I was desperate to find things to fill my bare walls once we reached our destination. Thrift stores, of course, are my favorite. That's where I found this old window. It may not look like anything special to some, but to me it was just another treasure. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it but I knew it was going to fill up a decent-sized space on my wall once I was finished with whatever I was going to do.

I thought about putting 6 photos in each pane. That would have looked nice, probably 6- 8x10's. I then heard that Staples does these black and white prints called Engineering prints. I had recently had a photo done of my 3 kiddos so I decided to try it out. I went to Staples online and uploaded the photo. Keep in mind, this is a big window, 36" x 27" to be exact. That's how big I asked for the print to be.

In a little over an hour I went to go pick up my print. Can you believe my surprise when the clerk at Staples handed me a huge, beautiful print of my children and told me that my total was $1.07? What!? I couldn't believe it. I brought it home, taped it behind the window and hammered on some jigsaw brackets to the back of the window to hang it. Hung it up, and Viola!

Yes, I realize that one of my son's faces is a little bit cut off by a pane, but I still love it! I do plan on changing the photo again though. Heck, at $1.07 per print I could change it every week!

Shabby Vanity

This is by far one of my favorite projects yet! I've always wanted a vanity but the standard vanity never did the trick for me. I wanted something unique and shabbulous! Not only was this fun, but it was super easy and can be made from so many different things.

These are the things I happened to gather together for my project:

An old door from the flea market,


An old sewing table I found at an estate sale,

....and horribly spray painted mirror I also found at the flea market.

The door in my opinion was perfect as is so I didn't do a thing to it. I didn't have to do much to the sewing table either to acheive the look I loved!

Let me just take a minute to profess my love of Vintage Market and Design Furniture Paint and Finishing touches which is what I used for the whole project. This stuff is soooo easy! You don't have to sand or prime and it sticks to virtually anything. I've painted glass, terra cotta, MDF, wood and even fabric with this stuff. It's incredible, and with 59 colors to choose from the possibilities are virtually endless. Off my soapbox I go.

So as I said previously, I didn't have to do much to the sewing table. I painted it with VM&D's Furniture paint in the color 'Antique', distressed it with 150 grit sandpaper and then waxed it with VM&D's Dark Umber Wax which gave it a much more rich and distressed look. Lastly, I topped it with VM&D's Satin Clear coat just to ensure that it would be protected for years to come.

The mirror took a bit more work because of how badly it was spray painted and black to boot. I was hoping to find a gold mirror but I loved the shape of this one too much to pass it up. I started by painting the whole thing with one coat of 'Antique'.

That just wasn't doing it for me. I then used another great product by Vintage Market and Design called Crowning Touch in 'Antique Gold'. I kinda just "pounced" that over it with a regular paint brush.

The picture above doesn't do it justice due to the lighting but hopefully you get the idea. The Crowning Touch has a bit of shine and is absolutely beautiful. Lastly, I dry brushed another VM&D paint color called 'Conch' over that. I was happy with the results. I wanted a little bit of "girly" but not too much.

Put it all together and get your very own Shabby vanity! I plan on making it it's own vanity chair but for now I just used one of my dining chairs. I just loved this project and I hope you do too! If you do one, I'd love to see pictures.

Chic Snack Stands

I think I put off making these stands longer than I'd care to admit. I kept having visions of myself shattering lots of nice plates, flinging glass everywhere, and injuring myself doing it. I was very wrong. It was so much easier than I had imagined.

The first plate I tried doing really discouraged me. I drilled into it for about 10 minutes and only made one little knick in the plate. I am here to tell you that there are just some plates you can't drill into. Of course my first would be the only one not capable of drilling. Just my luck. I attempted another plate and within seconds I had a perfect hole in the middle. After drilling into several different plates and cups I can now tell you that with some plates you just need to be patient. A plate can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes to drill into. At the end of 10 minutes if all you've made with the drill is a knick, chances are that plate cannot be drilled into.

Here's how you get started:

The drill bit pictured is a 5/16" drill bit made for glass, ceramics, and tile. Boy is this little thing amazing! It comes in many sizes but I felt that this was the best size for what I was trying to accomplish. I bought it at my local hardware store. I think just about any hardware store would carry it.

I used a dry erase marker to mark a spot in the middle. You can use any type of marker, this is just the one I had on hand. If you can eyeball the middle then you don't even need a marker.

Next, it is VERY important that you use water. I didn't know this at first and I tried drilling into a plate without the water....wow! Porcelian was flying everywhere and it made one of the most terrible noises i've ever heard. This being said, even with the water, it is important that you are wearing some sort of eye protection. This project is not worth losing an eye for! Pour enough water to cover the base of the plate in an even layer. Then begin drilling!

Again, be patient! Apply a small amount of pressure and wait until the drill bit penitrates the dish. Do not rush this process. Applying too much pressure may cause the dish to crack.

Repeat this process with as many plates and dishes as you would like. I drilled into plates, cups, bowls, ceramic tart pans, gravy bowls, and teapots.

The 3 pink things pictured are called Tier Hardeware. I couldn't find any place local that sold them so I bought them online for about $5 per set of 3. I bought them in gold, silver, white, black, and pink. With these you can also make the decision of making however many tiers you would like. I made 2-tiered and 3-tiered stands but you can go as high as you would like on yours.

I even made a couple plates that had no tiers but had the hardware in the middle. Fancy!

Once you have all of your dishes and tier hardware together you just screw them together. It's as easy as that!

I just love how there are so many options for making these beauties! You can make them to whatever suits your taste. Happy Drilling!

Candlesticks & Cakestands

When it comes to beautiful and easy, I'm there! With my daughter's first birthday coming up I wanted to make it a vintage tea party theme. When it comes to the Shabby Chic decorating style I just cannot resist. I wanted to make some simple, yet lovely cake stands.
I am one of those good ol' thrift store addicts. I started this project by collecting the best dishes, pans, and candlesticks I could find.

Here is some of my loot:

After trying several different glues I have discovered that E6000 is my favorite for this project. The one thing I would not suggest you use for this type of project is hot glue. It doesn't hold up when it comes to gluing dishes and the hot glue cannot get wet or else you will have one giant mess when your dishes fall apart.

I applied a small amount of glue to one of the candlesticks at the base.

Continue to glue the candlesticks to the dishes and stack as high as you would like. I planned on using this one for fruit so it needed to be big and tall to hold lots of fruit!

I also wanted to make some simple, yet fun cake stands.

This one is a candle holder and an Metal Pie Pan:

Here is what I ended up with once all gluing was done:

I hope you enjoyed this simple DIY. Stayed tuned for more projects from the Vintage Tea Party!