Karla's Cottage

A Chicken Swing for the Ladies

When I mentioned to Rich that a friend told me she had seen chickens happily swinging at a botanical park, he went right outside and made one for our sweet hens.

So far they aren’t impressed, interested, or even intrigued by the idea.  I heard you need to give them time.  My thoughts are that when they are in their enclosed area or the coop, it would get more attention because they would have less entertainment in those spaces.

This is set up in the open fence where they are constantly busy, scratching and looking for tasty treats, so they are just way, way too busy to kick back and relax on the swing.  

We will see how it goes.  We like it set up where we can watch them, but this might not be the spot it needs to be in.  I’ll update you as spring progresses and we are outside more to observe.  

Gosh, is spring really ever coming?  This has been such a dreary month of March.  I could use a little chicken fun to brighten my day.  Get swinging, little ladies!

Karlas Cottages

On Thursdays, my glass artist friend opens her studio for our mosaic group.  I cannot get into cutting glass but I do enjoy gluing pieces of glass, ceramic, or rock onto stuff.  Lately, I’ve been crafting stone cottages.

I’ve been adding porcelaine flowers too.

Some houses are made with broken china, some are painted, a few are mossy.  None got good photos taken. 

See what I mean?  I’m getting into a bad habit of not getting pictures as I finish things, let alone before or during shots, then taking them directly into Good Juju.    

I’ll try to get some better pictures because I really like these fairy cottages.  And honestly, a LOT of work went into them. 

Oops

Maybe you remember a few posts back, where I said I should be slapped for even thinking I might need more space at the mall?

Welp, I went for it anyway.

I keep telling myself it is only 3x3’, not a big deal.  And it is only for my jewelry, vintage, handmade, and new silver.

Was it a good idea?  Who the heck knows.  I might be, well I probably am crazy to take on more. 

I was excited about the whole decorating aspect of it and happy to have a reason to steal the awning from our chicken coop.  But did I really need a second spot at the mall? 

As if that generous dollop of insanity wasn’t enough, lookee here.  I’m also making bath products to sell there.

 

April Showers Bring May Flowers but DO NOT try to spray paint your umbrellas

At Good Juju, I want to make use of ALL my space, floor to ceiling.  My plan is to hang various items  up high to make seasonal displays.  For Spring, I decided to go with umbrellas.

My first thought was to spray paint used umbrellas and add greenery.

Well…

After going through two cans of spray paint that ended up runny, not covering up the underlying color, and just looking like a drippy, blotchy, poorly done mess- I soon discovered how bad that idea was.  

Umbrellas seem to be made of a material that repels liquids.

Who’d have thought of that?

Well, I was trying to be thrifty about it and was happy to get free umbrellas from a friend, but do you know how much spray paint costs?  That was not going to be a cheap way to do it.

After looking on Amazon and other places and seeing that affordability was not going to be applicable to this project, I almost gave up the idea.  Then, I found five, white paper umbrellas at a thrift store for a couple bucks each!  

So, I started looking for fake white roses and greenery, and was attacked again by sticker shock.  I once again was about to give up on my plan.  Then friends brought me grocery bags of flowers they’d gotten at estate sales and didn’t need.

Plan April Showers was back on track!

I was also given a naked, vintage umbrella in bits and pieces.  The handle was so pretty, I just had to put the thing back together.

So the skeleton was rebuilt with duct tape, wire, and string.  It will never open and close, but none of this set does after adding the flowers to them.

The one with the great handle was so nice, I thought it deserved vintage florals and pretty fabric, so I spent a lot of time on it, as well as plucking an entire rose covered hat to finish it with.

Sadly, I was careless with my glue and when you hold it up to the light, you can see the clear blobs of dried glue on the transparent fabric. 

None of the results are anything like my plans. I was going to take down the stained glass window, and have just greens in white umbrellas hanging.  But since that didn’t work out and I went with what was available, I think I like the colorful display even more!  

Turning an ugly duckling into an uglier toad

This was previously an unattractive, not to my taste at all, chest of drawers.  I’d brought it into the Good Juju sale last month to sit it in the parking lot area to get rid of cheap.

Then the day turned drizzly.  I wondered if it would matter much if the ugly guy got wet, who cared?  It couldn’t get worse.

But a nice dealer brought it inside for me. I quickly made space in my booth and then had to stare at it for the rest of the sale.  After a bit of looking, I got past the finish ( which was so bad, I thought it was veneer, but it’s not, this is real wood) and thought, hmm, those are nice lines.  And look at the pretty hardware.

So, while setting up for next month’s sale, I thought I’d leave the poor thing and maybe someone else would notice it’s possibilities too.

After arranging the furniture, I always take lots of photos to look at once I get home, to rethink areas and plan the smalls that I’ll be adding.  When looking at this picture, I decided that this center area just looked sad and blah.

Instead of fetching the brown, ugly duckling chest and bringing it back home to give it a glow up, I packed up my paints and thought I’d do a quick turn over there.  

Things did not go as planned.  Maybe the warehouse was too cold?  The temperature only stays warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing between shows.  Maybe it was me trying to rush it? Maybe I didn’t bring enough color options or supplies with me to do what I wanted? 

Whatever it was, I just kept getting murk.  The duckling was turning into a toad, not a swan and I was turning into an obsessed, and unhinged painter. Poor Beth was working next to me in her space and had to listen to the whole dilemma as I was verbally assaulting my design decisions. 

Here is what I learned.  Well, I already knew it, but in this case, between the cold and rushing the situation the lesson on chalk paint was amplified.  

Dried chalk paint will return to a liquid state if it gets wet, even more quickly if it is barely dry. Which is why most people use wax, not glaze over it.  I was trying to use an umber glaze over a buttery cream chalk  and what I was getting was a flesh toned blend of the two shades, not layers.

I tried many more layers and fixes, but the ugliness just became stronger.  A quick project turned into an all dang day disaster. 

At the end, I worked it out, slowly but surely by purposely blending the umber, cream and some white, over and over and over, building up incrementally during breaks of working on the rest of my space. While telling myself I should just take it home and start over 

My stubbornness prevailed and I stayed till I got it right, then clear coated the piece so the chalk would never murk up again.  Looking back, I realize that I could’ve used the water based clear coat over my cream color, then done the glaze over that, and clear coated again.

But that would’ve been too easy, and honestly, I didn’t think of it at the time because I kept trying just one more thing, then one more thing, on and on.

But now, I really like the lovely lines, hardware, and many, many blended coats of paint that nudged this ugly duckling into, well maybe not a swan, but at least an attractive duck.

 

Trying some furniture looks

I have been painting some furniture.

This piece was picked up along the side of the road and looked like someone started to strip it and gave up.  I decided to keep the original blue and just touch up with a matching color, leaving a lot of the bare wood.

When it dried, I lightly sanded it, and topped it off with dark oak stain and poly.  I used that combo over the gray table too.  

I’m also experimenting with “salt wash”.  

So far, so good, I think I’ll like it.  

It involves a lot of steps, but is interesting to play with, so I don’t mind the extra work.  

First, a base coat of chalk paint or primer.

Second, the salt wash.  Instead of salt, I use  unsanded grout mixed in my paint until it’s as thick as brownie batter.  It messily gets dabbed on.

I let it dry over night, then add a coat of another color of either chalk or regular paint.  

After that dries, it gets sanded.  

Sometimes the sanding can look great, other times not, it often needs touched up with some of the top color.

After done, it needs sealed with wax or Polycrylic.  Personally, I am not a fan of using wax, but it does look good.  Polycrylic is easier.

On this, I did one more step.

Before the clear coat, I mixed some umber acrylic paint with glaze, brushed it on and wiped it off.

I used the salt wash technique on this table too.  Along with three colors of taupe and cream.

Big change, huh?

I am really enjoying the texture that the grout creates.

There was a bag of charcoal colored grout in my supply stash already so that is my background so far.  I bought some sand colored and will try that next.

Although the dark gray seems to do well under different shades of paint.

This new trick has been so fun!  I am on a roll repainting everything.