I got a cute little three shelf bookcase at an estate sale. I thought it would be about the right size for a child's bedroom.So I decided not to go my usual route with the distressing and making it look aged. I went for a bright sunny yellow and painted the back of the shelves white.It looked a bit boring, so I decided I would try my hand at stenciling. I found a sweet one with flowers thinking it couldn't be very hard could it? Well let's just say my flowers looked like big yellow blobs. Not so ... VIEW POST
Not mine anymore
Sometimes … a deal is not a deal
You know the saying "if it's too good to be true it probably is"? On this project I learned this the hard way.I found this great deal on craigslist. It was a vanity with a cute circular mirror and an upright dresser with great carving from the 1930's. $40 for the pair! I talked my hubby into going to take a look at them (which is code for "Shanna's going to buy these").We got there, and they were so cute! The only problem was that they were coated in lots of paint. Not just lots of paint, but ... VIEW POST
Oops I did it again!
Add captionI love having before and after pictures of all of my projects. Some of them are really challenging and I felt like giving up in the middle of it. Once it's finished I like to look back at how crudy it looked before and I feel like it was worth it.Here's my problem...I can never remember to take the before picture! I get excited about starting something new and once I have slapped a coat of paint on it, I remember that I forgot the before picture.Look what my husband put on my studio ... VIEW POST
Leave well enough alone
I got this cute little round vintage table at a garage sale for a song. It was an ugly, orangey (is that a word?) brown.I mixed a up a pretty turquoise paint, did several coats, distressed it and it looked pretty good. Then I thought maybe I should distress a spot right on the top in the middle. I rubbed and not much happened so I rubbed a bit more.A HUGE chunk just peeled off. Ugh!!So here's my pretty little table with the ugly orangey brown showing right through the top. So I tried to ... VIEW POST
Should have stayed in bed…
You know when you have one of those days where everything seems to go wrong? That was today for me. Before I was even out of bed I had a grouchy teenager yelling at me that I had washed the wrong shorts for her last night. Pretty sure she was lucky I washed any shorts for her.My husband's car was being worked on, so after having only two hours of sleep last night (insomnia) I had to take my daughter to school and him to work. I had a doctor's appointment so I had to kill and hour and 1/2. So of ... VIEW POST
Little white dresser
My aunt called me about a dresser at an estate sale. I drove down to find this pretty little dresser that needed some work.I sanded and sanded and sanded! This paint did not want to come off. So I decided stripper was the answer.No it really wasn't. It just turned into a gooey mess.So, back to the sanding. This paint had obviously been on there for a realllly long time.After the many days of sanding were finally over I started to paint. I used a light blue chalk paint on it. I went over the ... VIEW POST
Huge undertaking
This has been my most challenging project to date. I bought this dresser off craigslist. We drove a long way to see it (my husband was super excited about that), and it was a definite fixer upper. It was totally dated and smelled really bad. I thought it had some serious potential though. My husband did not. I think his exact words were "this is crap, nothing can be done with this, just walk away". He has no vision. So we piled it in the car along with the matching headboard, and we ... VIEW POST