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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

A Winner, A Letter and the Most Amazing Matchbox

It was a great day for me and it began with checking my blog comments to find out that I was the WINNER of the "Mother of all blog candy giveaway," which was hosted by Michele at "Thoughts of a cardmaking scrapbooker" I was so tickled as there was lots of entrants  and lots of goodies for cricut and cardmaking!  YES, and I got in on the last few hours before Random .org picked my number.  It 's going to be a great day I thought.  I then got my first letter from my son on a mission, and that was very exciting.  And I joined a swap which we were to design and stuff a regular size matchbox (250 count).   We had to be very descriptive of all our likes when we signed up.  Hence it was called "Partner's Choice"
hosted by the wonderful JoAnne Balaz of Vintage Dragonfly.
   We sent to someone other than we were receiving from.  I was so lucky to receive from Debi Huntsman of lifeinmystudio.com who completely spoiled me.  When I saw how pretty the outside looked, I knew I would slowly and carefully enjoy every minute of opening it because I had a feeling I was in for a real treat!   check out all the lovely details in my package.
Upon opening the box, I found this lovely tag laying there, and I got more excited 
I peeled back the tissue paper and found this. . . . 
and inside was this lovely long chained necklace
Oh, she knows what I like!
and there was also this, and inside it was this crazy wonderful stamp set from Technique Tuesday. Yes!
Well, so far I was elated, and I thought there is still the matchbox filled up with goodies.  So I peeled back 
another layer of tissue paper to reveal this. . . .
It looked rather long for a matchbox length.  I love the brown paper and the vintage lace and mini fan and flowers make the package. . . . 

It is absolute breathtaking and regal up on this pedestal.  I was swooning big time!
You must see more views of it!
The glass knob acts a drawer pull when it lays down.  Are you swooning yet?
the whole thing so stunningly decorated.  Every detail is amazing, even down to the crackle paint on the bottom.  Isn't this just so creative?
And I have not even gotten to the inside of the box yet.   I pulled it out and folded back the ecru crepe paper and this beautiful vintage lace was laying on top, and upon removal of the tied up lace there was 
this scene. . . . .baubles and bangles and tiny frames with vintage buttons.  and a lovely vintage crystal chandelier drop.  She couldn't have sent me a box any more perfect for me than this one.  Debi is so talented!  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.  I go back and take a look at it all, over and over and drool each time!
WOW, I GOT SPOILED!   Debi was dead on with this special matchbox for me.

I will show the box I did up for my partner soon, but it is in route to her still, and I don't want to spoil the surprise, so that will be the next post.
YEP, IT WAS THE PERFECT DAY!


Sunday, May 27, 2012

Thankful for the roses

On Wednesday of this past week, before we dropped our son off at The Mission Training Center. we went across the street to walk around the LDS Temple grounds.  The Pink roses were absolutely amazing.  I have never seen anything like those pink roses all in bloom before.  And since pink roses are my favorite flowers, I just had to get lots of pictures. They just went on and on, and it smelled so wonderfully fragrant in the air.



I was thankful for those roses, as any distractions were appreciated, for what we were about to do!  And that was to say good-bye for two years.


Saturday, May 26, 2012

Exchanged CDVs book

Exchanged 5 CDVs or altered cabinet cards.  It was hosted by JoAnn Balaz from vintage dragonfly.
It was challenging but very creative and fun!



I love some of the backs of these CDVs.  They are exquisite
This is not one of the CDVs that we exchanged, but I really wanted to put it into this post.  
It reminds me of an altered cabinet card too, and was made by the talented fabric designer
Diane Knotts Musings
Have a super Memorial weekend!



Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Sad and Wonderful day

The day has arrived
I am sad but thrilled for him at the same time
This wonderful young man is my youngest of 8 and we will take him to the MTC (Mission training
center) to stay for 3 weeks before leaving on a two year mission for our church to Preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  
He is 19 and in our church, when a young man reaches the age of 19, he puts everything in his life on hold to go out in the world to serve the Lord for two years.  He is not going off to war, and I am so grateful for that, but I will miss him terribly.  He is my baby, the last one to leave the nest.  After the first 3 weeks of training, he will fly to western Australia and be in and around the Perth area mostly, although his mission covers all of Western Australia.  I have been blogging this morning from our hotel room to try to keep my mind elsewhere, while he and my husband are still sleeping and am trying to hold back the tears, as he is such a wonderful son and I know he loves and appreciates his father and I so much!  I have just a few more hours with him.    
Ty is my 4th and last son to do this two year mission, so I have done this before, but that does
not make it any easier.  They leave as boys, and come back as men!  The last son closest to Ty 
served in Argentina, and the other two stayed in the states. 
He wears a ring on his hand that has a CTR on it and that stands for "Choose the Right"
 I am thankful that they are willing to do this service and I know they are watched over and protected!  They have all returned home safely! I really am happy for the adventure that he is about to undertake!  Have a great day!

Thursday, May 17, 2012

French Transfers and more whites

I have been painting up a storm and transforming pieces of my existing furniture into new shabby white French decor, and transforming found objects from yard sales into new attractions for my living room.  I love the new looks of transferred French writing onto objects.  Here are lots of photos of the things I have been working on.
This table came from this. . . . . . .
Remember in the late 90's and early 2000's, it was popular to marbleize wood.  I had painted this faux marble top for this table that my mother gave to me.  I love it's style and I painted this one by hand cause it was time for an update.
  After doing the transfer, I noticed that some of the image came off with the rubbing too, but I wanted to keep the distressed look and not fill in with black marker, and some of the paint came off too, which is another element I liked for the look.  I have been very excited about the process of transferring images onto furniture.  I have used tutorials from a few different blogs. but the one I most used is from:  The Consigner Designer blog as she gives a really good tutorial on this process.
I love the design of this base.
And then I painted up this little side table (below) to look kind of like the one in the turorial.
I did not get a picture of it before I spray painted it.   

Okay, yes that is a brand new close-up of another one of my very cute granddaughters.  Her name is Kinley Paige.  
And as far as the image on the table goes, I am seeing this a lot lately all over blog land and it does come from The graphics fairy of course, and it is the one The consigner designer used in her tutorial for her table.
Time to paint this coffee table, and I didn't get a picture before I started, so here is one in the process.  I hand painted this one too.  

For this one I just put a glaze on afterwards, and did not distress the paint!  There was not a handle on this table, but I added one that I painted with hammered iron from rust-0-leum, which is one of my favorite spray     
paints, and you can see from the picture above that I used it to spray the old urn I found. 
and check out the burlap runner I fabric transferred onto.  
a close-up of the sign that was transferred.
 I fringed both ends of the runner and did a running stitch on the machine so it would stop the fraying.
The new bird nest urn!
. . . a birds eye view of the bird nest that sits on top of the urn.
I even used the hammered iron to spray two finials that sit on my top shelf.

The shelf on the right side of the fireplace.

Now, I was sure I took before pictures of these little side tables I have painted white, that use to be cherry wood, but don't know what happened to those images, but here is the re-done version of those.




the urn got attacked by the spray paint too!
 Love that distressed look
 The lamp got a coat of white paint also.  It use to be gold.
I found this old suitcase at a yard sale and some one had done some cutesie tole painted teddy bears on the sides, so I knew what I had to do.  Again I use the hammered iron spray paint and painted it first then covered with this pretty french paper.  I have been looking for one of these at sales and finally found one.  
 I added a French tag with a muslin sash, then tucked it into my shelves. and placed some great books on top.
And one more thing for this post.  Remember a few posts back when I found a fun plastic wall urn from the 70's at a sale. Well I did one of my faux mercury glass treatment on it and hung it up.  I am in love with it!
 I think I need to do a tutorial on this one.  I am using 3 different spray paints for this faux finish.
Have a super good weekend to all my blogging friends.  
I have so many more projects for this living room of mine.  Stay tuned for more shabby
decor coming your way from Something Special.  I just need to take a little bit of a break! lol

I am linking up to these "linky parties"





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