Outdoor Mandala Side Table

I decided to use every color in the box for this little patio table, because, well, that's just who I am!  This large mandala stencil from DecoArt was the perfect design to create the unique shape I wanted and it was large enough to allow me to use all of my favorite shades.  I used an old turntable to get the different color stripes for the base, but you could use a lazy Susan or a compass.  The key is to create a colorful base and then stencil over each color with a contrasting or complimentary color.  Be fearless when you're decorating, my friends, and don't forget to Make Your Mark!

 So ready for a beverage and a book!

You don't have to cut out the mandala shape, you could use use a table round with this stencil.

Americana Decor Outdoor Living paint is perfect for this project!

Watch how to make it here!

STUFF I USED

Americana Decor Outdoor Living Paint

DecoArt Mandala Stencil

Hairpin legs

Sander & Jigsaw

Cosmetic sponges for stenciling

Patio perfect!

Cardboard Tile Mosaic Mirror

Have you ever seen the show Wheel of Fortune?  It's not a show I watch, but apparently I was inspired by the wheel when I designed this mirror!  Despite that, I do love that I got to use all of my favorite colors together at once.  My use of cardboard for mosaic tiles is becoming a true passion and I find it so much more versatile than heavy glass or ceramic tiles.  Once your piece is coated with the epoxy resin, it's tough as nails and smooth as glass!  Remember to use all of the colors in your Crayon box and to always Make Your Mark!

 Mirror of fortune!

I love how it matches everything!

Watch how to make it here!

STUFF I USED

Americana Outdoor Living Paint

E-6000 Glue

Glaze Coat 2-Part Epoxy Resin

Sander and Jigsaw

Round (Dollar Store) Mirror

Americana Outdoor Living Metallics in Vintage Brass

1/2" Plywood

Cardboard (Smooth)

Long Arm Lighter or Small Torch

HERE'S HOW

1. - 3.  Trace, cut and sand a large circle for the mirror base from 1/2" thick plywood

4.  Paint the wood circle in Americana Decor Vintage Brass

5. - 7.  Remove the round mirror from the frame, center it in the wood base and trace around it

8. & 9.  Paint smooth cardboard in all of your favorite colors with Americana Outdoor Living

10.  Cut long, thin triangular tiles (1/2" to 3/4" at base and about 1/4" at top) to fit around the edge of the mirror

11.  Glue them in place with E-6000 making sure that the entire length of the tile is glued down

12.  Mix and evenly pour the Glaze Coat 2-Part Epoxy Resin on top of your tiled mirror

13. & 14.  Evenly distribute the Glaze Coat with a sponge brush and then pop the tiny air bubbles with a long arm lighter or small torch

*This can take a while since air can get trapped in the channels of the corrugated cardboard BUT you can avoid this by using very thin cardboard or thick chipboard

15. & 16. After you cover and cure the Glaze Coat, glue the mirror in the center, let dry and hang!

 Mirror, mirror on the wall......

Enjoy!

Flower Headboard Makeover

For some reason I've been seeing these headboards at yard sales and moving sales.  I guess there are just a ton of them out there!  I thought it might be fun to see if I could spruce one up a bit and give it a different look.  After a month of having one on my back porch, I finally decided on flowers!  Why not?  I mean, if you're going to toss the thing anyway you might as well see what you can do with it, right?  Remember to give things a second chance and always Make Your Mark!

Sitting in the sun....Waiting for a bedroom

Watch how to make it here

STUFF I USED

Old slatted headboard

Scrap wood and 1" wide wood trim

Sander, Jigsaw, Paint Sprayer (my Tacklife tools)

Americana Decor Outdoor Living Paint (my favorite paint....ever!)

Amazing Goop II Max

HERE'S HOW

1. & 2.  Cut and sand 3" long pieces of 1" wide wood trim to create the flower petals

*You will need 8 petals per flower so do the math

3. & 4.  Cut and sand leaves and 3" x 3" squares

*2 leaves and 1 square per flower

5. - 7. Paint the petals in Americana Decor Outdoor Living in Garden Party, the 3" squares Harvest and the leaves in Lily Pad

8.  Glue the petals around the square with the Amazing Goop II Max and let dry

9.  Fill the paint sprayer canister with Americana Decor in Succulent 

10.  Add 10% water to the paint to thin it down

11.  Spray the front and back of the headboard and let dry

12.  Glue on the petals and flowers and you're done!

Sweet dreams!

Easy Rope Bowls

What happens when you try to sew a rope bowl and fail miserably?  You search for a fail-safe alternative!  I really did give it my all and decided to whip out my industrial glue gun, a few plastic bowls and some colorful paints and go to town.  I think these are going to look amazing in my craft house filled with yarn or on the patio with a funky cactus.  Gotta say, the contrasting colors inside each bowl actually kicked the plain old rope bowl up a notch!  Remember to search for alternatives and always try to Make Your Mark!

 Bowl-ing!

Can't wait to fill these with yarn!

Watch how to make them here!

STUFF I USED

Americana Decor Outdoor Living Paint

Large Glue Gun with 1/2" thick glue sticks

Thick rope

Plastic bowls

HERE'S HOW

1.  - 3.  Paint the insides and the outer rim of the plastic bowls with a bright color

*I used Americana Decor Outdoor Living Paint since it works beautifully on plastics

4.  Start glueing the rop about 1" down from the rim and work your way up to the rim

5.  Glue the rope around the rim and over the 1st part of the rope

6.  Continue gluing down to the base

7.  Coil the rope around the bottom of the bowl, cut the rope and glue the end in the very center

8.  Try a two-tone bowl with 3 rows of one color at the top rim

9.  Add an alternate color starting at the third row and finish like the blue bowl

 Go crazy with color!

You could bowl me over!

Cute Upholstered Ikea Pom Pom Stools

While wandering aimlessly through Ikea a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon the Frosta stools and decided they were just way too cute to pass up.  I bought 3 of them because one just wasn't going to cut it.  Since I couldn't really decide on a fabric I decided to hit Ebay to bid on some embroidered table cloths from India.  I got them for less than $20 with shipping included!  If you ever need something colorful & bohemian (and amazing), THIS is where to go!  Thanks to my friends at FairfieldWorld.com I had some foam and batting at the ready to hack the hallelujah out of these stools!  Now they're just my style.  Remember, hack everything, use beautiful fabrics and always Make Your Mark! 

Like colorful mushrooms on my lawn

Watch how to make them here!

STUFF I USED

1. Embroidered tablecloth from Ebay

2.  Matching heavy cotton

3.  Pompom trim

4. Craft knives & Staple Gun

5.  Americana Decor Outdoor Living paints

6. Sewing machine

7. Ikea Frosta Stools

8.  2" Cushion Foam & Cushion Wrap from Fairfield World

9. E-6000 Fabri-Fuse  

HERE'S HOW

1.  Cut the tablecloth into for equal pieces

*If the pieces are large enough to cover the stool seats, skip steps 2. & 3. 

2. & 3.   Cut 4" strips and sew them to the edges of the squares to even out the pieces 

and make them bigger

4. & 5. Trace the stool seat on the 2" foam and cut out with a fully extended craft knife

6.  Glue the foam to the top of the Frosta seat

7. Cut a piece of batting large enough to wrap the foam and wood seat and staple it around the base of the wood seat

8.  Trim the edges

9. &10. Center your fabric on top of the seat, flip over and staple around the underside 

along the edge and trim

OPTIONAL IF YOU WANT TO COVER THE UNDERSIDE OF THE STOOL

  11.  Trace another seat on poster board and cut

12.  Trace the circle on fabric and cut

13.  Cut 1/2" from the poster board circle all the way around

14.  Press the fabric around the poster board to create a clean, crisp edge

15.  Glue to the underside of the stool to cover the staples and let dry

16.  Paint the legs with Outdoor Living in colors that match the fabric

17.  Screw in the legs

18.  Glue pompom trim around the edge of each stool and pin in place until dry

Done!

Too cool for stool!

Flow Painted Dresser Ikea Hack

There is nothing more fun than dripping tons of paint on a canvas and watching it flow together.....NOTHING!  Lately I've been seeing tons of "dirty pour" paintings and flow paintings and thought it might be fun to incorporate the technique into a furniture piece.  So, that's just what I did.  I grabbed a RAST dresser at Ikea and went nutty bananas.  Because I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to paint the drawer fronts, I had 1/4" plywood cut to about the same size so I could experiment.  If you're more confident than I am, I say go for it on the drawer fronts and skip that part! Just FYI, it's much easier to flow paint a thin piece of plywood IF the dresser you're making over is already assembled.  Remember to get messy, use tons of color and always Make Your Mark!

Getting messy!

Watch how fun it is to make here!

STUFF I USED

Americana Decor Outdoor Living Paint

E-6000 Glue

RAST Ikea dresser

1/4" plywood cut to the size of the drawer fronts

Small cups and spoons

Drill

Optional:  Decorative Glass Bubble Knobs

HERE'S HOW

1.  Pour your colors into small cups and add about 10% water to each color and stir

2. & 3.   In 2 colors, spray a shot of silicone lubricant into the paint and stir

*This will cause a chemical reaction with the other paints and give some terrific "cell" effects

4.  Paint the edges of your plywood in a solid color

5.  Drip the paints on the plywood

6.  Move the plywood in all directions so that the paints blends together and covers the entire surface of the plywood

7.  Drip some other colors on your piece if you feel like there is a blank spot

*Let everything dry for as long as it takes

8.  I painted the edges of the drawer fronts black so that each plywood piece would look like it was framed

9.  Paint the rest of the dresser

10.  Glue the dry painted pieces to the drawer fronts with E-6000 Glue

11.  Assemble the drawers and extend the original drilled holes through the painted plywood so that you can add the hardware

12.  Screw in the knobs and put in the drawers!

Go with the flow!

Bright Fiesta Furniture Makeover

Lately I've been in love with serape blankets.  Remember my Margarita Chair & Fiesta Trays from a few weeks back?  I love the mix of bright colors with black and white and how they ombre from light to dark.  Recently I found just the colors of serapes I wanted on Amazon and decided to create an entire outdoor dining room set with them.  As it happens, I found a set of comfy dining chairs (purchased at a thrift store) just perfect for this project.  Now all I needed to do was figure out how to get the color-to-color ombre effect I wanted.  Turns out almost any paint sprayer will work for this project. Check out the video to see just how I did it!  

Remember to use tons of color, go bright or go home and always 

Make Your Mark!

Ready for a colorful summer lunch with friends

 Just looking at this set makes me happy!

My beautiful new color-to-color ombre chairs

Watch how to make them here!

STUFF I USED

Americana Decor Outdoor Living Paint

Paint Sprayer

DecoArt Wood Reclaim

Thrift Store dining room set

Serape blankets

Fairfield 1/2" Cushion Foam

Staple Gun

Fairfield High Loft Batting

 HERE'S HOW

1.  I smoothed out the table top with DecoArt Wood Reclaim which is a heavy body acrylic coating that smooths out bumps, scratches and worn out veneer

2.  After I washed off all of the dirt and dust from my chairs I filled my Finish Max paint container with Outdoor Living in Harvest and then screwed it back to the sprayer

3.  Only after you've filled the container with your desired color and attached it to the sprayer, you then plug it in

4.  Spray the chair with smooth even strokes leaving the top 6" of the chair unpainted

5.  I put my chairs inside of a spray tent to dry to keep leaves, dirt and dust from getting on them while they dried

*Follow the instructions for cleaning the paint sprayer

6.  Fill the paint container with Sunset and paint the top 6" of the chair using large piece of cardboard about 4" away from the chair to block the paint from spraying too much on the lower painted area

*You want to he paint colors to blend from one to the other

7.  Next I sprayed the bottom of the 2 remaining chairs with Outdoor Living in Ladybug

 (This is such a hot beautiful color)

8.  Spray the tops of the 2 remaining chairs in Pansy

9. & 10.  Spray the bottom of the table in Turquoise Sky and the top in Adirondack using the same cardboard method 

11.  Remove the upholstered seats from the chairs and then remove the fabric from the seats

12.  Trace and cut 1/2" foam the size of the seat

13. Place the foam on top of a larger piece of batting and then place the seat face down on the foam

14. & 15. Staple the batting on the underside of the seat trapping the foam between the batting and the seat and then trim the excess batting

16. Cut the serape fabric about 6" wider and longer than the seat measurements

17.  Staple it in place over the batting

18. Screw the seat cushions back on the chairs

Done!

Come join me!