The Mother's Day roses from daughter's boyfriend are going strong, and since I prefer to have a pretty picture greet you when you pop by, I'll start the post with those, because what comes next is not pretty...hahaha
I bought this table many years ago in Omaha while there teaching at Silver Bella. It was charming and cheap, and in need of love. A lot of love apparently, because I have set it aside for years.
Recently, while in the garage, I put my son to work sanding it. It was old and peeling (thus the irresistable price tag). How to make the top even and useable became the question.
And then I remembered the amazingly clever creations of Swarm. I believe they use old oil paintings or paintings on canvas to create works of art with old furniture. Amazing stuff. Which led me to thinking about what I might have that would work. I thought a paint by number piece might do just the trick. So I found one in the garage, and cut it to size of the table top. I thought I'd paint the table and that the painting I had would stand out too much, so I painted the side of the painting with the same paint (.50 little jar picked up at the reject pile at Home Depot), that's what's happening here:
So far so good. Oh, before painting, I did cut the painting down to size. Because paint by numbers are often done on chipboard, it was easy to cut to size with scissors. After it was painted (I could have waited to paint it until after it was glued to table too), I glued it onto the table top. then I painted the table. And that's when that sinking feeling crept in, "um, don't think this is going to go where I'd hoped it would, but maybe...." so I pushed on. And then I was sure, it just wasn't what I thought it would be, it looked like I painted flowers (and not very pretty ones at that) on top of a table, or like I decoupaged it. It lost all the fun of knowing it was a paint by number piece first. See?:
So then I grabbed some nail polish remover, and next a sander, and started trying to take the paint off the paint by number...uh oh...
But hey, I haven't given up yet! As the saying goes, if at first you don't succeed, try try again. I'm going to keep working on it, and look, I may try this direction next...I think I like the way this old book cover looks sitting on it right now:
I'll be back soon to report in and hopefully show something I love. Won't be hard to improve upon it's current look, that's for sure!
