The 4th Front Porch Display

Happy 4th of July!

My clean front porch has a few flowers by the door.

Some African Daisies have popped up in unwanted places so I cut the flowers for next to the door.

I filled two totes with Frappuccino bottles and water.

And added a little chalkboard art to the tote I made over last summer.

Simple and fun.

Happy Independence Day!

Thanks for stopping by...

                   Linking up with these great blogs.

I Made the Cover!

Sometimes things happen that are so amazing, you never quite believe them....

I was going through my blog roll and was reading Knick of Time a few weeks ago......

She was writing about being featured in the newest issue of Somerset Life and had this photo:

I could not believe my eyes.

You see, I knew I had some bottles I soldered in this issue but I had not seen it yet.

I started saying, "HEY!! HEY!  I think I am on the COVER!!!!"

My husband  looked and I RAN the whole way out to the mail box.

I am not built for speed so it made my husband chuckle.

Sure enough, there I am.

WOW!!!

I made the bottles to commemorate a vacation we took with my daughter to the Bahamas a couple years ago.

I am so proud of those bottles.

Having them on the cover, unbelievable...

If you see it on the newsstand, take a look.  

The issue is fantastic as always.

Christen Hammons is always amazing.

Thank you to the wonderful staff at Stampington for nailing it again.

Thanks for stopping by....

Candy Corn Glitter Tealights

  I have this idea for awhile and finally got all the bits and pieces together to get it done.

First I gathered and washed some glass jars and bottles.

I taped off the tops and the middles of each bottle.

Now the fun stuff...glitter and glue...

A shudder from my husband at this point...

He is not a fan of glitter...

Starting with the bottoms I brush the glue on and cover with yellow glitter.  

This yellow glitter hd some texture to it.

Then I glittered the tops with white glitter.

Carefully remove the tape from the center.

I added orange glitter to the middles and sprayed with a light coat of Krylon clear coat to hold everything in place.

I wrapped the tops of each bottle with some twine.

  Then I added lights.

This little frappachino bottle got a strand of rice lights.

And this little jar has a battery operated tea light.

I will show you more of this vignette soon.

Thanks for stopping by...

Linking up with these great blogs.

DecoArt Chalky Finish Paint for Glass...

This summer I got some Chalky Finish paints for Glass from DecoArt. 

 I was super eager to try them out.

Last summer I painted some jars with just regular paint and they did not turn out just how I wanted.

So I assembled a few bottles and jars to coat with the paint.

As suggested, I wiped each clean bottle or jar with alcohol.

Then I started painting the bottles.

The first brush I tried had bristles that were too coarse.

So I switched to this one....

Much better.

The paint went on relatively smoothly.

You can see here that I did not cover the tops as well.

I did a whole bunch with the same color because I wanted to see how far one bottle would stretch.

You can see I did 9 bottles of varying sizes.

 This one little bottle is still almost half a bottle full.

I allowed them to dry and realized I had a cool mistake.

I removed the stickers from the Frappuccino bottles before they ran through the dishwasher.

But all the sticky residue did not come off with the washing or the alcohol.

Where the residue was, it crackled...

Which I loved!

I did go ahead and put a second coat on 4 days later to cover the areas where it was splotchy before.

I did NOT put a second coat over the crackled area.

I had also done some of the Chalkboard Paint for Glass by DecoArt on some bottles too.

I waited another four days.

I heated them all in the oven on two separate cookie sheets.

It did smell sort of bad but I had the house windows open...

  It seemed to be the chalkboard paint bottles that smelled the most.

I used these to take flowers to the fair.

It is easier to find all our entries if they all look the same.

Check out the repainted tote.

The herbs look a little sad.

This is after the fair.

I love the chalky finish on the grey bottles.

Some of the paint did chip off of them by the time we got home from the fair.

I am not sure if that was because I did something wrong.

Or if they bumped together too much in the car on the way there and back...

In either case...they turned out much better than last year's experiment with regular latex paint.

This would be fabulous for DIY wedding décor.

One little bottle of paint did those nine bottles in a variety of sizes.

With 2 coats each.

I have to say, though, that the Chalkboard Paint for glass was my favorite....

I love those bottles...

  I can't wait to use it some more!

Thanks for stopping by...