Painting a rug

Lately I've seen a lot of people blogging about painting rugs so I thought I'd give it a try.  I was still a bit skeptical about the results so I decided to buy a cheap rug and see what I could do.  I found an indoor/outdoor rug on Home Depot's website for around $15 so I wasn't worried about wasting too much money if I ruined it.  It for sure is nothing fancy, I think I read somewhere that it was made from recycled plastic!

Here you can see it a bit closer.  It has a slight hobnail texture:

When I first thought about painting a rug I thought a stenciled pattern would be neat but I had second thoughts so I settled on a simple stripe pattern.  We have a small dining room and I thought an intricate pattern might make the room look too busy ......... and stripes would be much easier to paint!  I laid out the rug in our living room (my work space) and got ready to measure and tape out my stripes.  Well, since my rug had a felt like texture the tape would not stick!  So I decided to use a cardboard edge as my guide and move it along as I went.  The rug had a somewhat striped texture so I would just follow the texture for painting my stripe.  I quickly found out that painting the stripes by hand would take FOREVER so I gave up that technique and thought I would try spray paint.  As I said before it was a cheap rug so I was willing to try anything.

So this time I moved to the backyard, I refrain from spray painting in the house :o)  I used some long paper to mark out my stripes and then got to work painting.  It was still somewhat slow going as I would measure one stripe at a time, paint, then move on to the next stripe.  After about an hour of work I got through a bit over half the rug. It was starting to get a bit windy so I called it a day.

Things were looking pretty good so I was optimistic.  In some spots along the stripes there was a tiny amount of over-spray  but nothing super noticeable.  Brian helped me the next evening and the painting went much quicker having some one to help me measure and readjust the paper guide.  After letting it dry for a bit we moved it into the dining room and we both thought it looked pretty good.  Brian admitted he was skeptical when I first mentioned my rug painting plans but was impressed by how it turned out.  See, he should trust my instincts more .................. or maybe he's seen my instincts in action before and that's why he was skeptical :o)

The stripes are not too drastic but enough to provide some interest.  Here's a few more pictures of the rug from different angles:

Not bad, huh?

Overall I think it turned out quite well.  The painting might have worked a bit better on a something like a sisal rug where the weave is tight with longer fibers.  But for a $15 rug and a few cans of spray paint it looks pretty good.

The rug we had in the dining room was moved to the living room to replace our dark blue braided rug to lighten things up.  It seems like our goal in every room is to lighten things up a bit.  I guess that comes with having a small house and painting a lot of rooms with bright colors :o)

So I'm here to confirm what I've read on other blogs, it is possible to paint a rug!

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Blue Cricket Design


Creations by Kara

The bookcases are FINALLY finished!

It took a bit of time but the bookcases are finally finished and I'm really happy about the results!  The lighter color and the new placement made all the difference for the room.  Even though it is a small room it now feels more open and bright. 

So here's what it looked like before we moved in:

Here is a picture taken soon after we moved in and painted the walls.  You can also see the bookcases when they were painted dark chocolate brown:

And here is a picture of how it looks now with the bookcases I painted here flanking the window:

Much better don't you think?

Here's a picture looking back towards the door:

Above the desk you can see the yard sale mirror I painted here and my seashell prints from here. Here's another angle of the seashell prints:

And a bit closer:

On the opposite wall from the seashell prints is another window.  This area of the room is still a work in progress.  I plan on getting rid of the small red bookcase and the white cabinet and replacing them with another piece of furniture that will fit the space a bit better.  Maybe something long and narrow?  We will see what I can find.

 

So that's how things are looking in the front/guest bedroom.  We are slowly making progress.  For now I really like how things turned out.  One day I wish we can do something like this around the window:

from houzz

That's how I envisioned things until we moved the bookcases to the window wall and I realized they were shorter than the window :o(  Maybe one day we will get around to building new shelves, and if we do my mom has already claimed my ticking stripe bookcases :o)

Thrift store finds!

I'm so glad it's Friday, it's been a long week!  On my way home from work today I decided to treat myself to some thrift store shopping :o)  I found a couple of bud vases and a candle holder.  Everything was 50% off so my grand total was around $3.50!

As soon as I got home I set to work trying to find a place for everything.  I put the cute white ceramic bud vase on my blue dresser with a geranium stem from the yard.

 

Here it is a bit closer up, I really like the textured stripes:

 

 You may have also noticed my cute little piggy bank on the dresser too.  It was a find of mine at a Marshall's or Ross a while back.  I love his coloring and the wings!  He makes me happy :o)

As for the candle holder, I'm not really sure where to put it but for now it is on the bookcase next to our digital picture frame.  

 

My favorite find from today was the test tube-like bud vase.  Being a biologist I love anything that's a little science-y :o)  I put a couple of pincushion flower stems from the yard in the vase and set it on the windowsill in the bathroom.  I thought it would work with the garden theme I was going for.

Here it is a bit closer, isn't it cute!

 

I was hoping to find some furniture today but maybe it's better I didn't as I already have a few projects I still need to finish.  Once I get the other striped bookcase out of the way I can finally get started on my dining chairs!

I hope everyone had a nice week.  Now it's time for me to get to work on things around the house!

A ticking stripe bookcase

Having a small house you really have to think about storage solutions and your use of colors and furniture.  I know that light colors are supposed to make things look larger but I've also read that you shouldn't be afraid to use bold colors on your walls because in some cases that can make rooms appear larger.  It's all a bit confusing so I've just been trying different things and seeing what works.  If you've been following our blog you may have noticed that we are not afraid of bold colors on the walls!  I'm not sure if it's made the rooms look smaller but it has added some fun to our decor.  So I guess that's another consideration .............. if it makes you happy then that's what really matters :o)

Anyway back to the point of this post.  We were given a couple of oak bookcases when we first moved into our house.  I have had this dream of having a library full of books, bookshelves from the floor to the ceiling, so I have the beginnings of a book collection that needed a home.  So with Brian's help I decided to paint the bookcases a chocolate brown.  We thought the color would look nice and they would also contrast nicely with the light blue of the guest bedroom where we would put them.

 
We liked the color but the size and placement just wasn't working.  We had put them right next to one another on the wall by the door so it made things feel a bit cramped when entering the room.  I tried moving them to a wall across the room from the doorway on either side of a window but that still didn't work so well.  I next thought maybe if they were a lighter color that would help things out a bit so I got to painting and covered up the brown with white.

But I couldn't stop there so I decided to paint stripes on the back!  I talked with Brian about color options, I was debating a light cream, tan, light blue or yellow.  Brian thought the blue would be nice so I got to work measuring out 2 inch sections on the bookcase back and applying tape to mark-off the areas to be left unpainted.

 

I noticed when I was putting on the tape that there was a small stripe between the two pieces of tape.

I'm not sure if my measuring was a bit off or the tape is slightly narrow than 1 inch but the extra stripe worked for me ........ now my stripes would be ticking stripes!

Next I got to work applying two coats of blue paint I already had, Martha Stewart's "Enamelware" that I had already used for the magazine rack.  It is slightly lighter than the blue of the walls.

And when it finally dried I was able to peel-off the tape and see what I had done.  The "Frog Tape" I used worked wonders, there was no seep-through along the edges of the tape!  Don't you hate when you have finished painting and excitedly peel-off the tape only to reveal the paint had seeped under the tape, ugh!

 

Here's a closer view of the stripes:

And then I put the shelves back in, and I had a brand new bookcase.  Isn't it cute!

A little closer view:

 

And no bookcase is complete without books, so I got to work filling it up.

 

The stripes aren't as visible with all the books, but they are still there:

And here:

I had to include a picture with my favorite book, "To Kill a Mockingbird".  Bailey's middle name is Atticus after the father character in the book :o)

Now I have the other bookcase left to paint.  We hope to one day make our own taller bookcases to form a little cubby flanking the window and the bed in the guest room.  Another thing to put on our to-do list  :o)

An Easter egg cup display

Since Easter is this Sunday I decided to bring out my egg cups and other egg-themed items and put them on display.

The cute ceramic bunny egg holder on the left was a gift from Brian's mom.  When she came to visit last year we went to the local farmer's market and bought a carton of eggs of assorted colors: traditional whites and browns, with a couple of blue ones thrown in.  We spent some time blowing the whites and eggs through small piercings in the shell and then put the emptied shells on display in the bunny holder.  I wish I had thought to do that this year.  Instead I found some egg-shaped candles in cream, blue, and green with tiny speckles.

And this year Brian's mom sent us the cute individual blue with polka-dots egg cups.  I think they will look perfect in our dish display cabinet after Easter, contrasting nicely with the blue and green stripes of the shelf paper :o)

I also brought out my light blue cake stand and found a glass dome I had around to cover a tiny wire nest holding an egg candle.  I would love to have a real nest on display ............ maybe I can make one out of moss and twigs for next year! 

So that's my Easter display for this year.  This weekend my family is coming to visit and we are planning on decorating eggs and having an Easter egg hunt.  Even though my brothers and I are all grown up my family still has an Easter egg hunt every year!  We try to be nonchalant about it, but we all want to be the one to find the most eggs!

A garden update

Our bearded irises finally opened and looked so beautiful I had to take some pictures and share.

 

And another picture:

 

 Beautiful, huh?  I love the color and the delicateness of the petals.

And last but not least our first artichoke!

Ah, spring! :o)

A bit of paint distressing

So I haven't gotten around to working on the chairs just yet.  They do look really nice in the dining room, and I'm excited to get started on them, but there are other projects I need to finish first.

I've had this really cute magazine rack that my brothers gave me for a birthday gift a few years back that has been hiding on the far side of the sofa.  Not because it needed to be hidden but it just became a catchall for books and magazines and the mess of that needed to be hidden!  So I decided it would be hidden no more!  But I also decided that the blue that it was painted wouldn't quite go with the blue dresser already in the living room ......... and I wanted a chance to test out some paint I had bought for the dining chairs!

So I got to work ............ well, here's a before picture first:

It's a nice shade of blue but it doesn't really work with this blue from the dresser (in my opinion):

The color I chose, Martha Stewart's "Enamelware" is a lighter blue but I think it works better with the blue of the dresser.  Here you can see it on the magazine rack after I primed and painted it:

It's a different shade of blue, with a slight greenish tint but I think it works well with the other colors in the living room.  I also wanted to try to show-off the details of the magazine rack, especially those cute floral cutouts so I got out some sandpaper and sanded all the edges down to the wood surface to give a nice contrast.

Here you can see the finished product:

And a bit closer of the edges:

And the floral motif:

 

And here it is holding my home decorating/fix-it magazines and inspiration binder of ideas I've cut-out from past issues.

Hopefully now that I have the magazine rack visible my magazines will find their way there instead of scattered over the coffee table!