Crafting Roundup

I've been doing LOTS of crafting lately. Lots of it has involved spray paint and scrapbook paper. I've been painting rooms, furniture, and decor for many, many years, but have just recently discovered the magic that is spray paint! I tried using spray paint in the past, but didn't care for it so much because it was too hard to get an even finish. I don't know if spray paint has changed or maybe my eyes are just going bad, but it seems to work wonderfully now. It comes in so many great colors now too. And, I didn't even mention how much of a time saver it is!

Here are a few "decor" items that I've done lately using scrapbook paper and paint.

Young Keri Silhouette When my mom saw that I was doing silhouettes of Annabelle, she packed up a silhouette that they had done of me when I was a little girl and brought it down to see if I could use it. Of course I could! I found this awesome square frame that was an ugly 80s style, but looks awesome with a little spray paint. I turned around the ugly forest green matte to convert it into a beautiful crisp white, and added some pretty scrapbook paper for the background. I used spray paint again to paint the silhouette frame (the one that it was originally in). Use a little Windex to clean the glass and voila... I LOVE IT!
Colorful Magnet Board This beautiful magnet board was actually a magnet board that I fitted with metal many years ago in the beginning of my "antiques reincarnated" phase. The frame is an antique that I bought at my first antique auction as part of a lot of probably 50 frames for $10 (no one else would bid because they didn't want to take 50 frames home). 8 years later, I'm still using the frames. Anyway, a little spray paint modernized this frame, and I decoupaged some pretty scrapbook paper onto the metal. I already had the magnets, but I added some sweet letter stickers to them to sweeten them up to match the whole theme perfectly.

Annabelle's Jewelry Music Box
Here is Annabelle with her "new room". :) When I first finished this jewelry box, I told Annabelle that I had a surprise for her. I didn't realize that just a few hours before I had been telling her all about the new room that we were making for her, so when I revealed the surprise, her response was "MY NEW ROOM!" I thought it was so cute that I didn't correct her. Later on, we told her that it's called a jewelry box, so now she alternates between calling it her "new room" and her "jewelry box". This girl LOVES her accessories, so she is totally loving her jewelry box!
Anyway, I wish I had taken a "before" picture of this jewelry box. I bought it at a yard sale that I drove by a few weeks ago. It wasn't in horrible shape, but it is so much prettier now. It was that 70s cream and gold and had dirty pink velvet walls on the inside. I removed all of the hardware and the dirty pink paper, and spray painted the pieces. When I was done, I added the paper on the walls on the inside, the fronts of the drawers, and the circle on the front. When I added the paper to the drawers, I had to come up with a way to open the doors since I had broken 2 of the tiny knobs while removing them, so I attached some pretty ribbon to use as a pull. I then decorated the front, and... Annabelle LOVES it!

Annabelle's Birth Record Embroidery I have been working on this embroidery for weeks! My great aunt made birth record embroideries for all 3 of us kids, and I had always wanted one for Annabelle. I spent many hours looking in craft stores and online for one that I liked, but had no luck. One day I discovered Sublime Stitching and fell in love with the retro-modern graphics. That was EXACTLY the style I had been looking for! They didn't have any "birth records" on the website, but I used an angel and birdy on their site to come up with my own design. As soon as I finished the design, I went out and bought all of the embroidery tools I needed (well... too many... there's a reason people stick with the basics), and started embroidering. I got most of the graphics parts done pretty quickly, but kept having issues like the thread being too big for the small text (I had to make the text bigger and eventually learned that I could just disassemble the thread to make smaller thread) and the freakin' transfer kept rubbing off so I had to keep trying to retrace it (if anyone has any suggestions for avoiding this if I ever decide to tackle another embroidery in the future, please let me know!). Anyway... after MANY, MANY hours with a needle in my hand, I finally finished this a few nights ago. Again, I used a vintage frame (from my lot of 50) and some spray paint, and here it is! It really is as perfect as I was hoping it would be!
And here is the cross-stitch of my birth record done by my great Aunty Anne. I painted the frame, cleaned up the 30 years of wear a bit, and now it's ready to go in Annabelle's bedroom too.

Have I mentioned how anxious I am to get all of this into the room to see it all together?!?!