Cheap to Choice: Fun with Shiny Brites

This is a guest post by Lara Hightower.

So. It’s not too early to do a holiday project, right? I mean, growing up, my family never acknowledged the holiday season until December 1st, and we never got our Christmas tree until a week or two before Christmas, but now that I’m out from under the evil clutches of my repressive parents I figure I can decorate whenever I want to. (Kidding, Mom and Dad!)

The photo above on the left is but a small portion of the crazy collection of vintage and new Christmas ornaments I’ve amassed over the years. My husband and I go home to Arkansas for Christmas, so we don’t even get a tree…these beauties have been collecting dust on a shelf. Yet I can’t stop buying them.

My favorites, of course, are the vintage Shiny Brites.

Anyone who loves ornaments loves Shiny Brites. And a stack of boxes like those in the photo above, so promising, so secretive (anything could be inside there! who knows the bounty that awaits!) is enough to send me into an estate sale-induced asthma attack.

When I saw a vintage ornament wreath in a magazine layout, I realized that it was a perfect way to showcase my lovely collection. And it turned out to be really easy. So easy that I may just turn into crazy-ornament-wreath lady.

1. Start with a wreath form from a craft store — I got mine from Michael’s for about $5. You don’t want one of the soft ones that are meant to have things stuck in them — get one of the green, solid ones.

2. Using ribbon, cover the entire wreath so that if you get a peek of the wreath base through the ornaments, it won’t look gross and green. I like to use the plastic-y, outdoor ribbon made for wreath hanging, because it stretches really well and I think that the ornaments adhere better to it rather than satin ribbon. You won’t really see the ribbon once the wreath is finished, so don’t spend a whole lot of money on this — it takes a lot of ribbon to cover the whole thing. Use a hot glue gun and do it in sections (in other words, cut shorter lengths of ribbon instead of trying to wrap it using one long length of ribbon) so that you can pull it really tight. Any wrinkles or bumps will interfere with the ornaments getting a good bond with the ribbon.

3. This is the hardest part for me. Actually applying the glue to the ornaments makes me so nervous! And they were so happy, weren’t they, tucked away in their little boxes?  But push through, make yourself do it. It helps to use your least-favorite ornaments for this first part — they’re not going to show much once you start piling the ornaments on, so sometimes I’ll even use newer bulbs for this part. With the hot glue gun, glue a ring of ornaments to the outside edge of the wreath, as shown above. Always keep in mind that the wreath needs to look attractive from the sides, not just the front, so take a look at that vantage point every now and then as you go along. Try and lay out the balls so you can see if they’re going to fit evenly around the outside — you don’t want to get to the last spot and not have an ornament that will fit in there. When gluing, you should look to create a bond between the ornaments and the wreath in as many places as possible for maximum security.

4. Once you’ve got the outer ring finished, start on the inside. These ornaments aren’t going to fit around the wreath form in a nice even way like the outside — so just glue them in there as attractively as possible, kind of puzzle-piecing them together. Again, these are going to get covered up by your flashier ornaments, so you can use the ugly duckling ornaments for this layer.

5. Last is the most fun — pick out your fanciest Shiny Brites and place them front and center. Don’t glue them in place until you’ve laid them out to see what works best. I’ve made that mistake. Trust me, it’s not pretty.

There you have it — glittery, shiny fun for everyone!

Lara Hightower is an avid collector of all things Shiny and Brite. You can read more about her obsessions on her blog, Pretty. Quirky.

Cheap to Choice: Framing Vintage Illustrations

This is a guest post by Lara Hightower.

This week’s project: find something creative to do with the tons of ephemera I have stashed in my apartment. Vintage greeting cards, magazines, correspondence, hand-written recipes…but my biggest paper obsession are vintage children’s books.

If I find a children’s book that’s reasonably priced, I pick it up, no matter the condition – there’s always one or two illustrations inside that I know I can use for something. And some of the books give me fascinating glimpses of some of the highly disturbing things kids used to be taught – for example, here’s a passage from a Home Economics text from 1879, when, apparently, we believed WOOL was the solution to all of our problems: “The most healthful clothing for our climate, the year round, is that made of wool. If worn next the skin by all classes, in summer as well as winter, an incalculable amount of coughs, colds, diarrhea, dysenteries, and fevers would be prevented, as also many sudden an premature deaths from croup, diphtheria, and lung diseases.” Ah, yes, swaddle me in wool in the heat of a Chicago summer. Sounds delicious. Want to avoid lockjaw?  “Take a small quantity of turpentine, warm it , and pour it on the wound.” OUCH. Relief from choking? “Break an egg into a cup and give it to the patient to swallow. The white of the egg seems to catch around the obstacle and remove it. If one egg does not answer the purpose, try another. The white is all that is necessary.” First of all, the only thing more terrifying than choking on something would be if, during the process, someone was standing by, trying to force raw eggs down my throat. Second, what the heck does that part about the egg whites being the ”only thing necessary’ mean? What, are you supposed to take the time to separate the yolk from the egg whites while the person is choking?

But I digress. Mostly I’m obsessed with the illustrations in the books. It seems a shame that I keep buying the books for the pictures and then stacking them on the shelves in my craft room, where they end up dusty and lonely. I decided to try and pair them with some of the frames I’ve picked  up over the years. There are a lot of cool frames out there at thrift stores and yard sales, and you can usually grab them for pretty cheap. One weird thing I’ve noticed is that a cool frame with an ugly picture in it will often be priced less than a plain frame without anything in it – it’s as though the pricer can’t quite see past the ugliness.

Since I found out this week that I’m soon to be moving into a booth at the antique mall we’ve been on the waiting list for (I’m going into business with my SIL and mom and I couldn’t be more excited!) , I thought it was a perfect opportunity to try out some ideas I had for framing illustrations. I’ve got some vintage baby nursery stuff to put in the booth so I decided to start with projects that would be appropriate for a nursery – and since the booth is back home, in Fayetteville, Arkansas (Bible Belt Country – KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER!), I started with a couple of vintage children’s prayer books with charming illustrations – “Three Prayers” and “Prayers for Children.”

1. The first frame came with a mat with three openings. I wanted to try for a custom mat look , so I chose my illustrations and matched them with some art paper that I had hanging around. To cover the mats, I placed the mat on the back side of the art paper and cut around it, allowing about two inches of extra space on all sides.

2. I then cut holes out of the center of the mat openings, once again allowing about two inches to be folded over. 3. If you make a diagonal cut from the corner of the mat to the corner of the paper, you’ll get a nice, neat fold when it’s time to glue the paper down to the rear of the mat.

4. I started folding at the top of the mat, gluing the edges with a hot glue gun. (HOT glue fun. Don’t be seduced by these newfangled “Low Heat” glue guns. You cannot trust a glue gun bond unless you have burned yourself at least three times in the course of a project. Seriously, the bond is not nearly as strong with a “Low Heat” glue gun.)

5. Once you get the top edge of the paper glued down, you have to be very careful to keep the paper taut as you glue the rest of the edges. I found it easiest to glue the inside of the mat openings and then do the sides and the bottom. But always, always, always be monitoring the smoothness of the paper on the front of the mat – it’s easy to get it wrinkled on the front if you’re not paying attention. Also, make sure you’re working on an absolutely flat surface.

6. After papering the mats, I painted the frames to match.  The two smaller ones, in particular, needed some sprucing – take a look at that gilt edging; this frame has delusions of French grandeur and needed to be taken down a peg or two. I liked the way the cheerful yellow contrasted with the ornate carving on the frame

7. After putting the frames back together, I backed them with my favorite brown Kraft paper to finish them as neatly as possible.

And that’s it. Now I can just hope that “If I die before I wake” doesn’t give a child nightmares like it did me when I was little. I don’t need that on my conscience, man. Amen.

Lara Hightower is a yard sale freak who spends way too much time collecting crazy things she can’t find space for that will soon be in her antique mall booth.

Cheap to Choice: Recovering Lampshades

This is a guest post by Lara Hightower.

Great merciful heavens, it has been dark and gloomy in Chicago lately – Sunday’s lovely weather notwithstanding. This seemed like a really good time to dive into the metric ton of old lampshades I have lying around, earmarked for recovering. There’s nothing like lamplight to warm up a room now that the Chicago fall is settling in. I’ve been lucky and  have found several charming old lamps lately – especially chunky glass ones, of which I am particularly fond – but they’re rarely partnered with attractive shades. My daily walk through Andersonville takes me right by the windows of White Attic, where the most amazing, graphically colorful lampshades are displayed. I started wondering how hard it would be to recover lampshades, and a new collection was born.

This is what happens when I decide to start a new project: I start collecting. And collecting. And then I collect some more.  And then I start thinking of other things that I need for the project, like glue, fabric, and information. Years pass, and my friends start secretly talking about me behind my back, wondering what the hell is up with the pile of old lampshades in my apartment.

This project was particularly difficult for me to dive into, because it involved using some of my stores of fabric. I have a thing for fabric. I love vintage textiles, tablecloths, bedspreads, curtains, and so on. I’m always looking for a way to display them in a useful manner, but then when it’s time to cut into them, I balk. Not this time! I was going to start whittling down my stack of lampshades, and my vintage fabric treasures were my ticket to success.  This is how I did it.

1.  I have a great article from an old Martha Stewart magazine that tells how to make lampshades from scratch by buying the lampshade frames and something called “self-adhesive styrene.” I did a bit of investigating, and it appeared that it would be quite costly, so I figured I would start by recovering lampshades already built by someone more diligent than myself. I found lampshades at yard sales and thrift stores, such as The Brown Elephant, Village Thrift, and the Salvation Army. I didn’t spend more than $3 on any of them. Things to consider while shopping for shades to recover: only white or cream-colored shades will work, since any older patterns will shine through once the lamp is turned on. Also, check for brittleness; older shades crack quite easily. The shade should be in very good shape, without dents or tears.

2.  The fabrics I used on the two smaller shades were purchased in thrift stores; the fabric on the largest shade is a micro-suede that I bought at the Textile Discount Outlet for $9.95 a yard. (By the way, do you know about the Textile Discount Outlet? It’s at 2121 W. 21^st Street in Chicago, and it is fabulous. Three stories of the biggest selection of fabric and trim that you have ever seen in your life. I have rarely noticed any fabric priced over $14.95/yard; the majority of it is under $10 a yard.) You can also use any other fabric you like – curtains, sheets, anything that has a print and catches your eye. I even have a skirt with a wild graphic print that I plan to use for a shade. I used a suede, a chintz, and a cotton print for these three shades, and I didn’t notice that one worked better then another. 3.  The first step is to create a pattern with your lampshade. You do this by spreading out a huge piece of paper, laying the lampshade on its side – seam down – and rolling the shade across the paper. (Kraft paper works well, and you can buy a huge roll of it for $9.95 at Home Depot. I use it for many different things around the house, so it’s really nice to have a roll on hand.) Trace the top edge of the shade until the seam is in the same position as when you started (i.e. a full revolution). This next part is vital: don’t lift the shade up when you get back around to the seam. Instead, without moving the shade, move your pencil to its bottom edge. Then roll the shade backwards along the same path, and trace the bottom edge until the shade is back to its starting position. If you move or lift the shade, you’ll mess up the pattern, so be very careful.

4. Cut the pattern out, allowing an inch or two extra on the sides. This is important, because you’ll need that extra fabric to fold over the top and bottom edges of the shade in order to leave a clean edge.

5. Pin the paper pattern to the fabric. Do not be lazy and try to cut the fabric around the pattern without pinning. This will not work. I cannot tell you how I know this, but trust me. Also, if you are using a fabric with a print, make sure you are cutting the fabric so that the print is right-side up. Again, I cannot tell you how I know this, I just do.

6. Do not use your favorite piece of fabric for your first lampshade, for you will make mistakes and ruin your favorite piece of fabric. Let us pause for a brief moment while I weep.

7. Once you get the fabric cut, you are going to take it outside, OUTSIDE, I tell you, and coat the back of it with a spray adhesive.  I used 3M  multipurpose adhesive . It got over everything. I had it in my hair. I had it in my eyelashes. I’m still peeling it off of my fingertips. You do not want to spray this in your house. Also, beware of sudden changes in wind direction. The good news is that IT WORKS. So well that your fabric will stick to itself. I would recommend getting an extra pair of hands your first time through on this, because it’s not easy to make the fabric do what you want it to do once you’ve sprayed the adhesive. I found that the easiest thing to do was to lay the fabric (print down, glue up) on a clean surface while you move on to the next step.

8.   It took some trial and error, but I think the easiest way to get the fabric on the lampshade is to roll the lampshade onto the sticky fabric, much like you did when you made your pattern. The tricky part here is to make sure that you’re rolling it on as straight as possible, leaving the fabric overlapping equally on the top and bottom. The first lampshade had me tearing my hair out, because I kept running out of fabric on the top of the shade and having excess on the bottom. It is hard at first and quite frustrating, but, by my third attempt, I had already gotten better at it. The good news is that the spray adhesive doesn’t bond permanently right away; if you need to, you can peel the fabric up and reposition it. Even reapplying the adhesive twice on the first shade didn’t seem to interfere with the eventual bonding of the fabric. The spray adhesive, as it turns out, is a very forgiving glue.

9.  Now smooth the fabric over the shade, because there will be air bubbles. Then smooth the fabric some more. And when you’re through smoothing the fabric, smooth it a little bit more. Let me just say that my first shade attempt is currently sitting on my kitchen table with tons of air bubbles in it. Smooth, people, until your fingertips are bleeding from your efforts.

10. If you went a little crazy and have three or four inches hanging over the edges of the shade, trim those to no more than two inches. You want the inside of the shade to be neat, as it will be visible from certain angles. The light shining through your shade will also illuminate any messy work.

11.  I used Aleene’s Fabric Fusion to fold the edges over and glue them to the inside of the shade. Once again, my handy-dandy binder clips  held the fabric in place while the glue dried. (I’m recommending a new marketing campaign for the binder clip folks – “Binder Clips: A Crafter’s Right Hand.”) Drying  is a lengthy process; I would clip the fabric for at least an hour to make sure it bonds.

And there you have it. I could have used trim on the shades – again, Textile Discount Outlet has bazillions of trim options – but  I decided to go simple with them the patterns were pretty busy. Also, fringe and ball trim tend to gather dust, and I haven’t quite figured out how to combat that.

Three down, fourteen thousand to go… bring on the dark Chicago winter! I’ll be ready.

Lara Hightower is a yard sale freak who spends way too much time collecting crazy things she can’t find space for.

Cheap to Choice: Dining Room Chairs

This is a guest post by Lara Hightower.

I am a collector. I am… a… curator. I think of myself as a… preservationist… keeping history alive by — filling — well, by collecting — by immersing myself and my home with –

Okay. Let’s cut the crap. I am addicted to yard sales, thrift stores, estate sales, and random junk carelessly discarded in the alleys of Chicago. At this point in my life, I have exhausted every storage option available to me, including using a friend’s basement storage space, and have even contemplated parking my car on the street so I can use the garage to store more of my treasures. However, I am tired of getting sarcastic texts from friends like the one that arrived last Monday right before 9 pm: “TURN ON A&E, UR SHOW IS ON,” only to find the show Hoarders upon changing the channel. It is my goal to do two makeover projects a month until I whittle down both my “to do” list and the pile of crap in my house. My  level of experience: low. My level of enthusiasm: high. You will be my witness as I fumble my way through attempting to turn Cheap to Choice.

My first project is a set of four dining room chairs that I found in an alley (for free!) while shopping at a neighboring garage sale.  They were weathered by their time in the alleyway, but they had good bones.

1. After removing the seats, I started by scrubbing the chairs with water and a mild detergent. I’ve always skipped this step–even though it is recommended in everything I’ve ever read about painting furniture (I’m very, very lazy)–but after scrubbing these down, I’m a convert. They were sitting out in the alley for a few days and had clearly been well-used in a dining room, and what I scrubbed off of them was pretty YUCKY (not to throw a technical term at you).

2. After letting them dry thoroughly, I used Gorilla Wood Glue to fix the parts of the veneer that had begun to pull away from the wood (and secured it with my classy binder clips, which worked surprisingly well). I also used wood putty to fill in where parts of the wood had chipped off.

3. I used my handy-dandy Black and Decker Mouse Sander to give the chairs an all-over sanding to prepare them for painting.

4. Next was a coat of tinted primer. I use Sherwin Williams paint–for the very unscientific reason that the guy that does small paint jobs for my sister-in-law refuses to paint with anything else because it cuts his labor time in half. (As you can see, I’m very thorough in my research.) I used to use the cheapest materials–both paint and brushes–and ruined a lot of projects that way. Now I use Purdy brushes, which cost more than other brushes, but which leave a smooth, beautiful surface on my projects. By spending a little bit more on the materials, I save myself time, and the results look better.

5. When the primer had dried thoroughly, I used Sherwin Williams Duration Home Interior Acrylic Latex in Tricorn Black with a satin finish to give the chairs about three coats for the richest black possible.

6. Next came the seats: these were covered in a super-thick white vinyl that was in good shape–no tears or stains. I did some Googling on how best to go about recovering these, and while Martha (of course) said that I should remove the current seat cover and replace the batting, I found plenty of links that said as long as the batting was in good shape, it was okay just to recover the current upholstery. I decided to go that way because 1. have I mentioned I’m lazy? and 2. it really was such a good foundation–the vinyl is super strong, and the batting was in fabulous shape. I spent about $35 on the fabric at Hancock’s. Covering the seats was easy except for the part where there was a “notch”–a cut out on the seat where the seat fit into the chair. It was a little tricky to figure out how to puzzle-piece the fabric on that notch, but with the help of my staple gun and  glue gun, I managed to do it (it’s not pretty on the backside, but who the heck is going to be looking at that?).

In all, I probably spent a total of about five hours working on these chairs, and I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out. In the future, I’ll probably look for chairs with seats that are square, with no odd shapes or cut-outs, so that reupholstering will be easier.

Advice? Things you would have done differently? Feel free to share!

Lara Hightower is a yard sale freak who spends way too much time collecting crazy things she can’t find space for.