Instagram & things I like

I look through Instagram almost everyday and I follow some amazing people So every Thursday I am going to start picking some images I like and posting them on here (with giving them credit of course and links to their Instagrams) I will pick about 3-5 or so images and say what I like about them design wise.


Number 1:  This kitchen from Dear Lillie, I love the little wooden horse and the bench for the table and the chandelier! the cable knit pillow is neutral and goes well even the table top is gorgeous.

Our Christmas decor is pretty much all put away but we wanted to share a little peek of a sign we will have available next holiday season. We think we might leave ours up for a while longer. You can tap for some sources. A detailed source list can be found on our blog by searching our dining room related posts.

A photo posted by @dearlillie on Dec 30, 2015 at 7:50pm PST

Number 2: Is this chair from DD'S Cottae & Design. I love anything buffalo check! I am usually not a huge fan of the color red but in this case I really love it. And the chair is perfect not even painted! I really wish I could find a couple chairs like that. And if anyone knows where to buy some buffalo plaid fabric that color or blue! please send me links I've been searching for a while now!

A bit of Christmas around my House on my blog today! #ddscottage #cottagestyle #coastalliving #cottagechristmas #farmhousestyle #frenchcountry #vintagechristmas #rusticchristmas #myholidayspirit2015

A photo posted by Darrielle Tennenbaum (@dds_cottage_and_design) on Dec 16, 2015 at 3:03pm PST

Number 3: Is this place setting from Prairie Charm. I love the brightness and crispness to her photo her whole Instagram is beautiful, I love the little tea towel that looks like a grain sack! The little pine cones and the hit of the wood for the charger plate. The natural elements really make it beautiful.

Hello lovelies. Have a nice weekend 🍃 #prairiecharm #frenchfarmhouse #tablesetting

A photo posted by Alexandra (@prairie_charm) on Nov 13, 2015 at 2:38am PST

So there are my first 3, let me know if you would like me to make this a weekly thing! If you want to follow me on Instagram just click Here. I usually post sneak peaks of what I'm working on or finished projects before I do a blog post!

vintage flour sack and a chair makeover

Hey y'all, I hope everyone had a good Christmas! Im going to show a chair makeover that I did a while back. I found this chair at either a yard sale or thrift store and only paid between 5-10 dollars for it. The fabric was just gross looking and the chair had scratches. 

I like the style of the chair and I happened to buy a sample pot of Annie Sloans Antibies Green, which I also found some antique flour sack fabric and one piece matched the green perfectly! 

Its a bright green but it brings a pop of color and would be great for a kids desk. 

I painted it and decided to not distress it so after the paint was done all I did was wax it and this how it came out! 

Excuse the bad pictures it was before I got my really good camera! Doesn't that fabric match perfectly? 

Old sewing table and Christmas time

So I got this sewing table for free, someone gave it to me, and I needed another little table in my room, my desk isn't big enough for all that I do. And I knew it would be perfect for it. So I took out the sewing machine and brace the part the opened and left the hidden storage in the table top to the left. here is how it started.

I love the legs on it! They have such a french style. So ive had this table for a while and i just never got around to painting it yet, but with Christmas coming up I wanted to put a small tree in my room and needed a place to put, so I finally finished it yesterday and decorated it.

I started out mixing some Country Chic paint in cheesecake and Annie Sloan french linen to give it a cool off white color since my bead board in my room is white. I love the white on white but you always want to do different shades of white to give it more texture. After that I used vaseline in random places so when i distressed the piece it would be kinda chippy.  

I used Miss Mustard Seed's hemp oil for a top coat and painted the handles in liquid gold leaf and used antiquing wax over them to darken them some.

For the Christmas decorations, I used a infinity scarf I crochet for a tree skirt, part of a burlap coffee sack on top of the table, the chalkboard I made from a old cabinet door, the mini Eiffel tower came from a yard sale as did the book, and the presents are the light boxes wrapped in Kraft paper with lace trim and bakers twine and a 1950s England stamp!

Underneath the table i added a old little picnic basket from a thrift store, and my $10 dollar dough bowl( huge score!) and one little white deer from a yard sale and some pine tree clipping! 

Also every ornaments on the little tree is either handmade by me or a vintage Christmas ball. What do y'all think?

The Coffee Table

we found this coffee table a while back and the top needed to be nailed and glued back down other than that it didn't have any problems.  I was going to stain the top but the green stain that was on it wouldn't come out, so I had to settle on painting it. Here is the before

Ignore the Halloween table cloth it was raining again! I wanted to give the table a french Swedish kinda of look. So I chose to paint the bottom in a blue/gray/green color then go over it with Annie Sloan chalk paint in french linen and I was going to paint the top in white but it wasnt covering good so I went over it in french linen.

So this is how it came out after everything, did white on the fake drawer part, and left the pulls original, and distressed it so you could see the underneath color, which you can see more below. and I clear waxed and dark waxed it all to make it feel old!

Those drawer pulls are amazing!

Vintage Christmas Light Ornaments

Back last year we bought some strands of vintage Christmas lights and one strand didn't work so I didn't want to throw away the bulbs so I decided to make glittered ornaments with them.

They started out like this.

I started out by hot gluing twine into a loop around the top then hot gluing twine around the top. like the picture below

Then after that I added modge podge to the bulb and used silver glitter all over it. I let it dry overnight then added modge podge over the top of the glitter. Tip: adding modge podge over the top of the glitter keeps its from getting everywhere and doesn't come off.

I think they make great Christmas ornaments.

Cane Back Chair

One of my favorite chairs is the french cane back chairs! They are classy, can be farmhouse french. They can go with so many styles. One of my favorite combos is the Cane back chairs with the antique grain sacks! I have one chair just waiting for me to refinish for myself but I just cant bring myself to pay a lot of money for a grain sack I am going to cut! Maybe that is what ill ask for Christmas!

Few weeks ago I started to work on one for the booth that I have at an Antique Flea Mall. It was dusty and just dirty this is how it looked before!

And here is after I worked my magic on it!

I painted the chair in Country Chic Paint in the color called cheese cake, lightly distressed the chair then waxed it. i reupholstered the seat in burlap. I love the combination of the two together!

In a week or so I will start adding blog post of some  handmade Christmas ornaments!

Piano bench

I found this piano bench at a yard sale it was in great shape, it just didn't have the bottom to it, so i got my grandpa to add the bottom piece of wood to it. I decided to use the paint I won from country chic paint and do a stencil on the top. 

Its the one in the center with the white little pot on top. I picked the color called cheesecake by country chic paint and used my silhouette machine to cut a stencil out of stencil blanks from hobby lobby in a herringbone kind of pattern and used the color rustic green on top. 

I love how it turned out, I distressed it a good bit so it still has a farmhouse style but with a cute pattern I distressed the top a little bit to so the color wasn't to bright and so it seemed a little faded to still give it old feel. What do y'all think of the piano bench?

French Enamel Milk Paint & A End Table

We picked up this little end table Last weekend the poly coat was just flaking off, now I like chippy paint when its pretty but that brown was just all scratched up and just not pretty. So we started off with this

Cute little farmhouse looking table with awesome detail on the sides of it. So just Saturday was the Market on Chapel Hill, if you don't know what it is, it is a market with vintage and painted items Miss Mustard Seed was there with her Milk Paint Line and painted furniture. we bought a couple of sample bags of paint and hemp oil! And my mom won one of her Parsons West brushes!. So I knew this was the perfect table to paint in French Enamel.  Here is how it ended up

I didn't add any bonding agent and just let it do what it was going to, and I got a little bit of chipping, which I am perfectly happy with and like it. I used the new brush and let me just say it is awesome the paint just goes on so smooth with it, it was also the first time I used hemp oil its so easy to use and my new favorite top coat! I would highly recommend trying all her products, as they are all natural. The hemp oil is also food safe. 

Upcoming post I will post all about the Market on Chapel Hill with loads of pictures! I even got to meet Beth from Old Tyme Marketplace. Which was awesome shes amazing!

Small Hutch and Bench

About a month ago(I think) we found a whole bunch of stuff to refinished at a yard sale. I know yall are tired of picture probably but it was easier to take a group photo! 

So the hutch is in the back to the left and the bench is to the right of it. It had awful flower like things around the heart and some on each side so we just sanded it off and painted it.

For the hutch and bench we used 3 or 4 different colors, Gray,white,blue and green. we started out with a base of grey then dry brushed on the blue and green in spots then added white and sanded it til we got the effect we wanted. I love how they turned out! 

I think this hutch would look great hung on the wall somewhere other than it sitting on top of something. 

In the next post I will show how I made over the piano bench!

Instagram and Features

Hey, y'all I have decided I am going to start doing Instagram features, By that I mean I am going to pick out a hashtag that is related to furniture make overs and crafts and every week I will pick my favorites to feature on Instagram and here on the blog. 

To enter all you have to do is use #diytreasures

To follow me on Instagram you can find me @olivianicole90

By linking up the the hashtag you are allowing me to use your photo to post on my Instagram and my blog I will have a link backs so you get all the credit!

Painting Pumpkins

Fall and Halloween is my favorite time of year, and I love pumpkins. So when I went to a yard sale and found 6 foam pumpkins I had to get them! They were the generic kinda brightly orange pumpkins with dirt on them so they needed a little updating.

I started out paint them white and let them dry, then I mixed white and antiquing gel and white acrylic paint to tone it down some all over the pumpkin then wiped it off then used white over the finish and white it over to mute the brown color, the paint was matte so it help make the pumpkin look dirty and not freshly painted. 

I absolutely love how they turned out! The no longer look like yard sale pumpkins.

What do y'all think? Would you have these made over pumpkins in your house?

Free Standing Mirror

Tonight I am going to show a make over of a large free standing mirror that my grandpa actually found for me at yard sale. Also about a week ago I won a giveaway for some Country Chic Paint, it is a chalk and mineral based paint also VOC free!. This was my first time trying out the paint, and I loved it. Its not to thick or runny and goes on so smooth! It dries matte and sands easily for the distressed looked all in all I loved the paint and would use it again. Here is how the mirror started. 

The Yellow End Table

This end table also come from the same yard sale. it is a mission style and I thought it needed a bit of help and a pop of color. And it had a few scratched and chipping clear coat on top.

Green End Table

In my post before this one I showed some things we found at a yard sale. One was this cute little end table to me looked like a small farmhouse table in a end table size. If only it was bigger! Here is how it started out.

Its the one to the left in front of the small hutch/shelf

I started out sanding the top and stained it and used a dark wax over the stain to make it even darker, After that I painteg the rest in a darkish green color and lightly distressed it and added dark wax to it to. 

I love how it turned out! and now looks like a old mini farmhouse table.

I also made these fabric pumpkins like the one below.

I will have more re-do's from the furniture in the first picture, so check back to see how those turned out. I also won some Country Chic Paint from a giveaway. So you will also see some furniture make overs using their paint, Excited to show you!

Linking up with .French Country Cottage

Finds of the Week #2

We went to a few yard sales the other day and this what we found.

2 endtables, a piano bench, 3 hanging wire baskets, another bench, a shelf, and taller shelf that i think hangs on the wall but also has two doors on the bottom. a large picture frame and a small shirt that im gonna use to make pumpkins like the one below

Ive already started on making a few fall items for the booth starting with the cute fabric pumpkins. 

Sewing Chair

I actually got this chair for free along with a sewing table. that I am going to use as a craft desk. It was a little dirty and fabric was awful. but there was also storage in the seat for small items.
This is how it started out.

Coral and White Nightstand

This nightstand come from a yard sale that I saw on a local Facebook group. We bought several things from them, The blue and white cabinet a few posts back was from them, and got a couple galvanized wash tubs and tall galvanized planter looking thing. This one took the longest to finish cause i just took my time and didn't know what to do it. After it sat for a few days i decide to kinda modern with it as it had such straight lines.

This is how it started out

I decide to use a coral color on the base of it and cut out in the drawers white and i left the knobs the same and I lightly distressed it in places. 

I love the colors make it more fun and a little more modern and the gold knobs goes perfect with it. I forgot to take more pictures before it got put into the booth. 

Painted channel back chair

We got this chair at a city-wide yard sale for $5.. which was a steal. It had some stains on the fabric and knicks in the wood. so I decided that since we got it for so cheap I would try the Annie Sloan paint on the fabric. Here is how it started out.

I painted the  fabric in Annie Sloan old white, as I was painting it I would dip the brush in water then in the paint to make it more watery then paint it onto the fabric it took a few coats here in there as it was watered down. Then I used waverly inspirations paint for the arms and legs.I lightly distressed the fabric to make it smooth and heavily distressed the arms and legs then i waxed the whole thing.

Here is how it turned out

The paint and wax do not come off when you sit on it and the wax over the paint makes it feel like a soft leather. So what do y'all think of the chair now? Would you ever paint the fabric?