As you may have noticed, I'm quite *ahem* thrifty. I pretty much refuse to pay full price for something. This is rooted in several things. We are a single income family with three children, so I can't just run out and buy something every time I feel like it - I have to be more intentional about my purchases. And trust me when I say this did not come naturally to me. My thriftiness started out of necessity. Now, it's almost a game for me. If I see something for our home that I like at, for example, Pottery Barn or Ballard Designs, I will try to duplicate it instead of buying it. Most of the time, I'm very satisfied with my version. Which I promise cost significantly less than the original item. So the first thing I recently finished was some storage for Katie's room.
I started with this. For real.
It was 99 cents on half price day at Goodwill.
Now seriously, buying that and knowing I could make it look good is some real vision. Or crazy business, because this was some airbrushing at its finest.
This cute pink bucket is what it looks like now.
I sanded the heck out of it, use a spray primer, and spray painted it with some leftover pink I had. Total project cost? 99 cents.
This was my next project. It was also a half price GW find. It had some chickens and eggs hot glued to the front. Cute, right? I yanked those suckers off. It was $1.99, so I really wasn't going to be too heartbroken if I ruined it by pulling off the crazy chickens. Next, I used some leftover sample paint I had from when I couldn't decide what color to paint Katie's room, so that part of the project was free. I used a foam brush and painted a few coats over the brick red. Now it's a perfect storage basket on her bookshelf, and it cost $1.99 and about an hour of my time. I'm going to find a small K and glue it to the front. By that point the project will probably be about $5.00.
I love the framed saying on the top of her bookshelf - it says "There's no place like home." I think I'm going to paint that bookend tangerine, which would match her curtains and some pillows I've already made. That bookend is part of a set that I got as a gift about 7 years ago. I already have the paint, so that project will be a freebie.
Do you remember in my post about her Christmas stocking I showed you an etsy print that I wanted to try to make?
It looks like this.
I liked that version, but I didn't love it.
And I certainly didn't love it for $75.00 plus shipping.
So I got a canvas for $5.00 (two for $10.00 - Henry got one of them for Christmas) and got started. I painted the canvas tangerine, my current color obsession. ($2.49 for the craft paint.) I bought some scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby when they were 50% off, and I just picked random patterns that I liked together, some skin tones, and some colors for hair. I ended up spending $6.00 on the paper and got WAY more than I needed. I probably used $2.00 worth of the paper I got, and I will use some of the other pieces for mats for some frames in her room or elsewhere in the house. (So my total cost for this project was about $10.00. Not $75 plus shipping!) The prints on the papers I got match other rooms in our home as well.
I used the same template from the Christmas stocking and just eyeballed it to make it bigger for the largest doll. I used the largest one to make them incrementally smaller and just eyeballed it again each time. For the faces, I just found things that were round and were the size I wanted the faces to be, traced them, and used that as a guide.
And I L.O.V.E. it. Henry is working on something that will go on either side of it, and I can't wait to show you that. And yes, I realize the mantle needs something else other than a Tyler candle (my favorite!), some bare wood people begging to be painted, and a candy cane pen. Baby steps. That mantle's been empty for a year and a half!
They still need some faces, but I had maxed out my *artistic* abilities for the day. And really, I'm a little scared that my lack of creativity will ruin this when I put their faces on....I promise they'll be faceless for a while!
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