It's been a big few weeks for us. In fact all of 2012 so far has been a giant adventure with a lot going on and people coming and going. Today is a day for me to catch up and I'm trying to do that in the most simple, peaceful, intuitive way possible. First I've been resting a lot, a bit of a shock to the system.
I have learned that when I do get a scheduled down day after weeks of busy-busy-busy it's a good time to do something creative and quiet - solitude is a must. I often plan a day of thrift shopping or work on a creative project that I've been wanting to do.
For my quiet day this time I knew I wanted to create something patriotic for the upcoming holidays. This great Stars and Stripes project featured on Craftaholics Anonymous last week definitely inspired me. You might remember that last week I mentioned finding an old boat cabinet door washed up on our beach. I had a feeling it might be perfect for a take off on the tutorial. The star was part of a project I had planned for last year that I never made. It worked out perfectly to use the star for this project and use the wood I bought with it last year for another project. The total cost for this project was about $6 for paints (which I'll use on other projects now) and the wood star.
So using the tutorial from Craftaholics Anonymous, I created the flag sign above. My one mistake was not putting the vaseline on before I painted the blue stripes. But in the end I was able to distress fine enough with some sand paper. It's funny how right before you distress something you look at it and think it looks awful. But it's amazing how a little distressing can pull it all together. I used very coarse sand paper to sand the edges and all the blue stripes. That seemed to take off just enough of the paint and soften up the edges.
It worked out well that the star perfectly covered the circle cut-out used to open the cabinet previously. I glued the star on top and stacked a big pile of heavy magazines on top of it to weigh it down for a while. Now I have a nice new addition to the mantle for this summer. I also bought five big flags on sticks to put outside this year. We're feeling very, very patriotic in these parts this summer and want to do all we can to celebrate, remember and observe.
Fun news. Tomorrow I am starting a new feature here called A Pin Test. I will take some tutorial or bit of advice from Pinterest boards and test it out and report to you on what works and what doesn't. Because you know, right, (haa-haa) that people pin a ton of stuff they haven't even read or tried? I've done two Pin Tests so far and right now we're 50-50. One worked, one was a total failure. Pop by tomorrow to find out what really worked.
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