Wednesday, March 31, 2010

100 Follower Giveaway!!

Boy!  That happened so fast that our heads are spinning!  We are both honored and humbled at the outpouring of support from everyone and all your fantastic comments.

To mark the occasion of surpassing the 100 follower mark, we are going to attempt our first EVAH giveaway, and I’m so excited about it!!  Hopefully you will be, too.

Cara has just opened an Etsy Shop, called Aqua Babe Paintings, where she takes custom orders to transform your favorite photographs into original works of water-colored art!   Here’s an example of what she does (these are her cherubish girly girls):

hairbows 003 face1 aquababes001

One lucky, lucky winner will receive a custom 8 x 10 water color painting on high-quality water color paper, made from the photograph of your choice!  Your custom creation will come in the above frame.  Can you believe it?!?

We’re going to give you the opportunity for 3 separate entries:

  1. Leave a comment below telling us about your favorite post so far and what you’d like to see in the future.
  2. Leave a comment below telling us you are a Google follower.  (If you’re not already, now’s your chance!!)
  3. Leave a comment below telling us that you’ve blogged/Facebooked/Tweeted about Twice Lovely and/or this giveaway.

Please be sure that you have an email address in your profile or leave one in the body of your comments so that we can contact the winner.  The giveaway will run until the evening of Monday, April 5th (10pm MST) and the winner will be chosen by Random.org and announced in a post on Tuesday, April 6th.

Good luck to everyone and one more GIGANTIC thank you for giving us a venue to show you what we do!

The TL Gals,


Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Debut of Twice Lovely Tags

As I’m getting ready to make delivery of our FIRST EVER SALE (yay), I thought I’d show you the lovely little tags I designed.  Tied on with a little bit of jute twine = sublime.

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Mirror Debacle Solved

After closer inspection yesterday, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to salvage the broken pediment mirror frame (now a broken, broken pediment mirror frame…)  I called some places, and it was only going to be about $10 to have a mirror that I already had cut to fit the frame, but when I went to try and get it back together, I saw that the wood was too splintered on the back of the frame to have anything to attach back together.  :(  I’m going to save the cool pediment for a future project, so be sure that you’ll see the likes of her again!

Lucky for me, my mommy dearest said that I could have this mirror from my old room at their house (read FREE, and free is good.)  It’s actually a way better quality mirror than the other, and the lovely little corners work wonderfully with the damask motif the set has going for it.  I didn’t dare try to prop the one up and stage it for the picture, so you’ll have to use your “imagination.” (If you watch Spongebob as much as I do, you’re probably making a little rainbow with your hands while reading that…)


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It all gets picked up this afternoon!  Twice Lovely’s first official, non-family sale!  :)  Woo hoo!!

Happy Tuesday!


P.S. – We’re inching our way toward the 100 follower mark and are planning a fantastic 1st giveaway to mark the occasion.  Help us out by inviting your friends to come follow TL!  Tweet, Facebook, Blog... Whatever you do!  :)  You guys are awesome!

Monday, March 29, 2010

Damask Dings, My New BFF

If you haven't noticed, we like Damask 'round these parts.  A quick peruse around blogland and one quickly sees that we're certainly not alone in a love of all things damask and flourish-like.


As promised, I'm going to introduce you to my new-found love, Damask Dings.  It's a FREE webdings-style font download from Nymphont, and I can already tell, it's going to be a fantastic weapon-of-choice in my crafting holster as I battle the forces of ugliness.  (Did I just type that?  Ehhh... I'm leavin' it.)

As you know, I used this lovely tool to compose the damask shape that I hand-painted on the corners of the vanity I just finished.  That particular damask was a composition of 4 different of the damask ding shapes that I put together in Microsoft Publisher, then printed it out.  Once printed, I traced the shapes with a heavy-handed pencil outline, put the paper face-down where I wanted the shape to be, and rubbed with a craft stick to transfer the image.  When you remove the paper, you'll have a nice little pencil guide for your hand-painting!  Worked like a champ!  I heart Damask Dings...


I also whipped up a little project with my new BFF using these 3 cute little framed mirrors that I picked up at the GW for 50 cents a piece.  The finish was a little (shall we say) distressed.  And what do we lovely ladies do when we see a slightly distressed finish?  Say it with me (in elementary school fashion), "We distress some more!!!"  Add some more distressing and make it look intentional.  Works. Every. Time.  (What will we ever do if Shabby Chic goes out of style?  Saints preserve us...)


After the strategic distressing to cover the not-so-strategic distressing, I decided to paint those fab corners with black craft paint, then (what else) distress with some sandpaper to bring out the details.  I composed a damask shape with Damask Dings in Publisher, and this time printed the shape directly on the back of some contact paper.  I cut out a stencil using an exacto-knife, stuck the contact paper stencil on the mirrors, and painted the damask shape on the mirror using the very same acrylic craft paint.  Most of you probably know this, but acrylic doesn't stick so well to smooth surfaces like glass or MIRROR.  I only found that out after I already had them painted.  I didn't let silly conventions like that stop me!    How to make this work?  DISTRESSING!!  Run some fine sandpaper over the freshly-painted damask shape, and make it look not-so-fresh (since it's going to end up looking that way anyhoo...), and VOILA:


Damask Dings... Check em out!

Saturday, March 27, 2010

The Lady's Vanity OR When A Good Photo Shoot Goes BAD

So... The good news is after a long week of working on the thing, I have finally finished the vanity commission to go along with the Lady's Sitting Chair.  You'll remember, she started out looking like this:



Here she is (finally united with the chair she inspired) after a coat of satin ivory, some hand-painted details, and just-the-right-amount of distressing:



I managed to snap just this one photo, when a giant gust of wind took this photo shoot from sublime to OH-MY-HECK!!!!


WAHHHHHHH!!!!  I seriously want to cry.  It was such a beautiful old (heavy) mirror.  :(  I believe I can put the frame back together with some L-shaped braces and have a new mirror cut for the frame.  Thank goodness neither the chair or the desk were harmed by the huge shards of thick, broken glass!!!  (small blessings...)

I decided to keep the original patina on the hardware, and don't those pulls look LOVELY against the ivory distressed finish?!?!?


And did you catch the glimpse of the hand-painted damask detail there in the corner?  Yeah... I'm a cheater.  I wish I could whip gorgeous flourishes out of thin air like my good friend Cara (see her handy work on the Damask Dining Table.)  I'm WAY too OCD to trust myself to put paint to anything without a guide.  I found a very fun, very useful, very FREE online tool that I used to create this damask design.  I'll tell you all about it Monday... (I know, I'm not only a cheater, I'm also a tease...)

Let's take another look at those damask details:



And one last look at her, in her decapitated glory:




Here's to hoping that I can get the mirror thing figured out before she comes to pick things up on Tuesday!

The mirror-less,



The Shabby Chic CottageDecor MammaMake it Yours @ My Backyard EdenFunky Junk's Saturday Nite SpecialDIY Day @ ASPTLFurniture Feature Fridays

Monday, March 22, 2010

A Quick French Country Headboard

After the mad push last week to get the Play Kitchen and Puppet Theater done, I was ready to start this week off with a simple, mindless kind of project.  (BTW, I just like to say WOWEE!!!  I've been completely blown away by everyone's incredible reception of these two projects!  I'm especially humbled by Miss Funky Junk Donna's spectacular complements and her featuring BOTH projects on Funky Junk's Sidebar from the Saturday Nite Special Party this week!!  LOVE Donna...)

So, last weekend at Goodwill's 50% off Saturday, I picked up this lovely king-size (a very difficult size to find, by the way) headboard for $6.50!!  Unfortunately, it's not wood.  :(  It's made of a wood-like resin, but I really liked the shape, and (of course) the price tag.  :)


I spray primed and painted it ivory, then added a mocha glaze to bring out all the wonderful details.  Gorgeous!



Next up, I'm going to be working on the vanity commission from the woman who is buying the Lady's Sitting Chair.  I found this great little desk during the same GW trip last weekend for $15, and picked up the broken pediment mirror a few days later at another thrift store for $9.  I'll be painting the same ivory as the chair.  Should I leave the original patina on the hardware, paint them ivory and distress, or paint a soft green and distress?


The lovely,


DIY Day @ ASPTLThe DIY Show Off  http://linda-coastalcharm.blogspot.com/

Friday, March 19, 2010

Thrifty Theatrics of the Puppet Sort

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm on the planning committee for my son's parochial school's big Spring Fundraising Gala, and I decided to throw my thrifty creativity toward creating some cool and different items for this year's Silent Auction at the event.  The first that I committed to was the Tres Chic Play Kitchen.  Then, this item came my way from someone on FreeCycle.org:


Months ago, I saw Beckie at Infarrantly Creative make an adorable puppet theater from an old hutch/bookshelf thingy. Genius!  I knew right away that this bookshelf headboard would make a fantastic puppet theater.  Knowing that I, myself, have no room whatsoever for anything of the sort in my house, I thought that I could make this for the school's silent auction as well!  I get a project, and the school gets some moola!  Win/win...

It really needed very little structural work in order to make it over into puppet theater form.  I just got a small piece of beadboard cut for the front and nailed that on and removed the back from the top portion.  Like Beckie's, mine was a little top heavy and none-too-steady.  I wouldn't want to crush any little Catholic School kiddo while they were attempting to act out some story for their Grandparents in their living room, so I jig sawed some boards down to an arch shape and attached them to the sides for added stability.

After those minor alterations, all it needed was paint.  I chose Cherry Red from Krylon, which is a really fantastic, deep red.  This was my first time using this color, and I'm a now a huge fan.  After a coat of black glaze, I was in love.  I have to recommend, if you'd like to keep your sanity when working with reds, do yourself a favor and use gray primer.  It makes the job so much easier!  It only took one coat and a touch up here and there after the gray primer.

And if you want a glorious color combination, try paring the Cherry Red with Blue Ocean Breeze, also from Krylon.  I painted the chalk board marquee frame with this fave color (it was leftover from the Turquoise Chair), and it was the perfect accent to the deep red!  I hand-painted the "Presenting" and flourishes, and the marquee is ready to announce the latest production!

I used a little turquoise bucket that I had around and painted on "Puppets" and some flourishes with some red acrylic.  It holds some hand puppets I bought from Amazon for the occasion.

Also made a little curtain out of some vintage fabric that I found at the thrift store, held up with an el-cheapo expansion rod.

Voila!!






Hope you're inspired to start looking at old things in new ways!

Craftily Yours,



This project is competing in the Kid's Craft Challenge at The CSI project!
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