free and crafty, part 3

Welcome back to another round of Land of the free, home of the crafty. Today's inspiration came from this gaudy gold square sort of shadow box-y frame I got at a garage sale last weekend for 50 cents. Goodbye gold, hello white. Two coats with a foam brush just to make sure the ugliness was gone. I am so not a fan of gold.

After the white came three coats of red. No real reason why, I just wanted to make sure the white was totally covered. I used acrylic paints I already had, I didn't go out and buy anything fancy.

Once the "oh my word it's making my eyes hurt" red was good and dry, I used some sandpaper and roughed it up around the edges. I wanted to give it a distressed look. I found out that my sandpaper was a little bit too soft of a grit to really do much damage, but you live and you learn. Once I was done sanding, I wiped it off then used some watered down burnt umber colored paint and painted over it.

Then I wiped it off with a paper towel, and repeated that process three or four times until I could see bits of brown showing up in the sanded off parts.

I did the same sort of thing with the mat, only I used blue paint. I was able to take the mat apart so I didn't accidentally paint the white. Once I was done, I just hot glued it back together. Then I cut a piece of patterned paper to fit the opening and made the star. Super easy. You can find the directions for the 3-D stars here. I cut a few stars out with my cricut using the George cartridge, but the first one was the perfect size. I'm sure there are several cartridges you can use, it just needs to be a symmetrical five-pointed star for it to work.

I stuck it on the paper with a stack of 3 foam dots, which, in retrospect might've been a little too big, and wa-la, there is absolutely no evidence that this was once the gaudy gold garage sale frame I bought for 50 cents!

I also love free printables. I got the one you see above here. Usually I send them to Costco, but this one I just printed at home on a piece of flecky looking cardstock. And now my entry way table is no longer decorated with shamrocks. I told Phil505 that he'll probably see red, white, and blue until Christmas. Because that's just how I roll.