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Posts Tagged ‘paint’

7 Ideas for Reusable Chalkboard Anything Tags

Posted in Around the House, Crafts, Creativity, Decorating, Learn Something New Every Day, tagged , , , , , , on November 28, 2010 | 11 Comments »

I’ve been working on this project for a few weeks, just due to time constraints, but I’m very excited to share it with you.  A few months ago I saw a post about using chalkboard paint to reuse some rectangular cardboard tags (sorry I don’t have the link) but it got my mind working.

I started thinking about the holiday season and just how much paper we go through and throw away when it comes to wrapping paper, ribbon and gift tags.  Then I thought about creating a re-usable gift tag and the ideas poured out from there.  As you’ll see below, the possibilities are endless. Let me know what other ways you would use these fun tags.

Step 1 – Find or purchase various sized tag or cardboard circles (or squares or whatever).  I bought all of mine at Michaels Arts and Crafts store.  The large ones were in the dollar bins.  They’re intended to be used as a 6 page mini book, but I just used each card separately.  The smaller ones were coasters in the clearance bin.  I think with the discount a set of 8 of them were just 26 cents or something crazy like that.  Buy a can of chalkboard paint, black or whatever color you choose.  Here they are ready to paint.

Step 2 – Gather other fun and creative supplies if you like.  Here are some of the items that I used.

Step 3 - Preferably outside or in a well ventilated room, lightly spray the tags with chalkboard paint.  Best to do two lighter coats to prevent drips.  Let this dry, and if you’d like, paint the other side.

Step 4 – After the paint has dried (at least 48 hours) the tags need to be prepped by rubbing the side of a piece of chalk all over each side.

Step 5 - Then erase the chalk.  This helps the paint to accept your writing better in the future.

Step 6 – If your shapes don’t have holes and you need them for your project, punch a hole in them.  I had to borrow a heavy duty hole punch to get through the thick cardboard on the coasters.  Fortunately the large circles already had holes in them.

Step 7 – Now comes the fun part!  Let’s see what we can do with these sexy little circles.  Here are a few ideas that I came up with…

Large Christmas gift tag

Large Snowflake Christmas gift tag

How Many Days till Christmas ?

Champagne or Wine Bottle Tag:

Birthday Gift Tags – As you can see this is very basic and very reusable.  I decorated the brown bag with chalk as well, but there’s so much more you can do for all kinds of gifts.

“What will you say” Garland – you can see the full version in my header at the top, but here’s a close up.

Anything Tag – I used this one to label our paper recycling basket, but of course it has a myriad of applications.

Update 1/1/2011: I found a couple of other party uses for these the other day too.  I used one to label my coffee urn so folks would know that it was decaf instead of regular coffee. I also hung the “recycle” one by our indoor recycle bin so people would know which bin was trash and which recycling. I love having them around to use wherever a label is needed.

I love the fact that the tags can be used over and over and over again. Let me know how this sparks your creativity.  I plan to use the rest of the small ones as gift tags this Christmas, unless I think of something else fun in the meantime.  Oh, we haven’t even begun to talk about Christmas ornaments or actual party coasters either!

This

week I’m linking to:


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My updated “cottage” furniture!

Posted in Around the House, Creativity, Decorating, Family & Friends, tagged , , , , on May 10, 2010 | 2 Comments »

I’m so excited about the transformations that are taking place around my house lately.

Ever since we moved to Arizona 6 years ago, my goal has been to create a coastal cottage atmosphere in my Southwest desert home.  You may think that’s crazy and out of place, but my heart just feels at home in the cozy comfort of pale blues, greens and lots of white.  I love the unpretentious air of painted furniture, yard sale finds, slipcovers and piles of throw pillows.  I want my guests to feel like they can kick off their shoes and put their feet up from the moment they walk in the door.

My inspiration comes from the cottage that my aunt owns on the shores of Lake Erie near Vermilion, Ohio.  This precious place is where we spent countless happy-go-lucky days swimming, spitting watermelon seeds and searching for Easter eggs.  It’s a source of joy in my memory bank and I long to create the same atmosphere in my home even though we’re miles and miles from the nearest lake.

So, it’s with that in mind that I’ve been dreaming of painting some of the furniture that I’ve had for many years.  The pieces were acquired in a different era, when darker colors filled my home.  Now, even though I love the pieces, they needed a face-lift.  It’s been on my To-Do list for years, but because of the time involved, it never quite rose to the top of my priorities for one reason or another.

That’s why I was thrilled when my sister, Sharon told me that she and her boyfriend, Craig were starting a business of refinishing furniture.  Craig has been doing furniture refinishing for many years, so it was a natural progression to open his own shop.  These are the pieces I had them start with, for me.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a “before” photo of this cabinet, but this little slice from another photo gives you an idea of the original colors.  The body was a forest green and the top was a deep red.  Terry bought the piece (with beautiful hand carved wood front) for me years ago when I pointed it out at a craft fair.  In recent years I was using it to store VHS video tapes, so it was a bit outdated, both inside and out.  I still love it, but wanted a lighter version.

The other pieces were 2 vintage school chairs that I picked up at a swap meet in Ohio.

I decided on a palette of pale colors that can be moved throughout the house when I feel like mixing things up, which I often do.

The cabinet sports two subtle tones of sage green and the chairs are a pale buttery yellow.  An added bonus is their use of eco-friendly paints, stains and materials.  Low-VOC paint, etc.

Of course, Craig did a gorgeous and thorough job on the inside of the cabinet as well.  When I re-loaded the cabinet I updated the contents too, with some of my placemats and napkins, so it’s more practical and user friendly since it sits in the dining room.

If you need any furniture painted or refinished, or are looking for some gorgeous pieces that they’ve already “Re-imagined” check them out.  Below is a link to their Facebook page and contact info as well.  They can also re-create new pieces from a combination of partially damaged old pieces.  Check out their pics on their FB page.

Call Sharon or Craig at 480 343 1189
Furniture Re-Imagined from a green perspective with Eco-friendly products and upcycle quality furniture for your home.
Re-created, Refinished, Re-purposed, Recycled, and Re-imagined.
Follow my blog and keep an eye out for my post about the other pieces that they’re working on for me.  I have “before” photos of the next pieces. I’ll also be showing the transformation of the living room with my new white sofa slipcover. Hope to see you again soon!

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Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 23, 2009 | 1 Comment »

A weekend of choices & checking tasks off the list -
Colors, Books and Technology Day

We’re getting closer to the reality of getting our house painted! Yea! We are hoping to get price quotes in the coming days and have picked out our paint colors. Saturday we went to Home Depot and picked up samples of the colors and tried them on the outside of the house. Basically I wanted it to be anything other than the beige/tan color family. If you’ve been to Phoenix, you’ll quickly notice that about 90% of the homes are some shade of beige. For those who know me, you know that I LOVE color and just couldn’t settle for beige. Nothing against that choice for others, but I just can’t do it myself. Now I’m not going to be too radical on the outside of the house, so as not to upset the neighbors, so it’s going to be a pale sage green with white trim and a few splashes of fern green here and there. Or to be a little more specific, go to the Behr paint website and look up these colors: Pale Sagebrush, Icy Tundra and Sea Fern. I think these will be good colors to help bring out whatever green we have in the plants in the yard. I can’t wait! Next big project will be the landscaping in the front yard. Looking forward to that one too.

I’m very excited about another change around here as well! We’ve had our wireless network set up for quite a while, but it’s also been unsecured for a long time, so anyone – neighbors, strangers, or whoever happens to drive by – could access it with no resistance. Lately we’ve had some issues with our computers that have concerned me and prompted me to want to reset our password for the wireless connection to protect it against unauthorized access.

So today I dug out the original disk and jumped into the instruction manual to try to figure out how to set up the password again. Now, you need to know that I’m really NOT good at anything relating to hardware on a computer, especially networking and cofiguration, etc. It’s all very intimidating for me because I’m afraid I’m going to click the wrong box and everything’s going to crash. Also because when I work on this kind of thing, I inevitably come across one or more questions that I have no idea how to answer. In this case, here’s just one example: Please choose the encryption type. How in the world am I supposed to know? Both choices are just 3 random letters that mean absolutely nothing to me. Fortunately there were only 2 choices, so I was able to determine it by process of elimination.

Anyway, it took me a few HOURS and I thought I had totally messed up the whole setup at a few points, but I finally stumbled through the process and got it to work like I wanted. The cool thing is that while I was in there, I figured out how to connect wirelessly to our printer and documents from the laptop to the other computer in the office, so I don’t have to go back and forth between computers to print or access documents or pictures that are on one or the other. Spiffy, huh?

Now I still have a few technical things that I need to figure out, like:

  • How to get my Outlook to auto-complete my email addresses when I begin to type them. It drives me crazy that it won’t do that.
  • How to sync my contacts and calendar from Outlook to my iPod touch. (I may be calling Randy or Shawn – our resident iPod geniuses for help)
  • How to download audio files to my computer, then iPod touch – Terry should be able to help me with this.

So I guess I’ll need to have another technology day soon.

Also, my mom has been cleaning closets and is getting rid of some of her books. But, before we give them away, I thought I’d check and see if anyone wants any of the hard covers. There are also quite a few Reader’s Digest Condensed books, but I’m guessing that most of the reading purists won’t be interested in those. Plus some paperbacks, but most of those are romance novels.

So, open up these pictures and look at the titles. If you’re interested in reading any of these books, let me know and I’ll set them aside and give them to you when we see you again.

Once we see if anyone wants any of these, we’re going to donate what’s left to my nephew Daniel’s fund raising yard sale in March. He’s raising money to go on a basketball mission trip to the Philippine’s next summer.

If you have anything you want to get rid of, let us know and we’ll have Daniel get in touch with you to pick up your “treasures” before his big sale. Or if you just want to send him a check, let us know that too and we can give you his address.

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