Weekend in North Carolina!

Oh, I had a wonderful weekend visiting my friend Susan from graduate school over the weekend! I haven't seen her in about 10 years. She now lives in Charlotte, NC and we just kinda cooked this up over Facebook and I am so glad we did.

I had a terrible trip down because I get ridiculously motion sick, which I usually do, but I have never actually gotten  sick. I just feel nauseous the entire trip and then when I am on terra firma again, I recover.

Not so this time. From the minute the  plane lifted off, I was a hot mess. I was praying the whole time for the Lord to keep me from embarrassing myself in front of 100 strangers. Well, no such luck but at least I was able to make to to the on board telephone booth of a toilet before lunch let loose.

Have I said I hate flying?

Luckily the trip back was way better thanks to the Less Drowsy Formula of Dramamine. I will never fly again without the stuff. I had absolutely no problem on either flight and I was even able to eat Taco Bell....which is really a testament to the powers of this magical pill. (This is not a paid advertisement for Dramamine, although I would totally do that because I now in love with the stuff and will never use anything else. Ever.)

We decided on the first weekend in March for two reasone: First because Susan assured me that the weather will be fantastic.
So this is what we woke up to on Saturday:

Yes beautiful. But for real!?!?!?!?

40 degrees and snowing. At least I was used to it, being from Pittsburgh and all. That's about all we have seen this entire winter. This just put the cherry on top. I am so over snow.

It did warm up later that day as we set off to antique our little hearts out.

Secondly, Charlotte has an antiques expo the first weekend of every month, called Metrolina Antiques Expo, and we both loves us some old rusty things! I have to say the Confederates have way better antiques than us Yankees. I have never seen such good pickings. Susan offered to help ship stuff if I bought anything.

How do you ship the entire Expo, I wonder? And would there be a multi-item discount for shipping???? Hmmm, it was tempting but in the end I just snagged some cool small glass bottles that guaranteed St. Joseph's syrup to work on just about any ailment. How about motion sickness???

I did meet a woman who paints furniture at one of the booths. Her name was Pia Crook and she runs Really Cool Stuff. She was asking us what color we would paint this really cool wood mirror and my sweet Susan pipes up, "Well, you should ask her (pointing her thumb at me). She paints furniture and she writes a blog." 

I am so bad at marketing myself. Luckily I have good friends who speak up for me. I gave her my card and she promptly states that she has heard of me. 

To which my sweet Susan replies, "Ahhh, You're famous!"

Not hardly and I am sure that woman was just being kind by saying that, but it still felt a little good. ANd then I almost walked into a table so that very quickly brought me back to earth. 

We saw so many neat things and the history unfolding was phenomenal.

I was snapping pictures left and right with my iPhone to share with you all of the awesome re- purposing and fun things that we saw. Here are a few to get your thinkers thinking!

Everything in this shop was amazing. Re-purposed wood everywhere

and he had an amazing moose head too. Need I say more?

need to make a cushion like this for my trunk

On the hunt for an Oxen Yoke now.........

I just realized I have a light fetish.

So, ignoring the fact that I get hellish levels of motion sickness, 

when do you want to go back to Metrolina with me????

Always being renewed,

Please see the link party page to see where I link arms with those blissfully beautiful bloggers that host every week. So gracious they are along with these other sweet ladies!      

 

 

Drop cloth Birds Nest Tutorial or Textured Bowl

I am going to be away this weekend to North carolina to visit a girlfriend of mine from grad school that I haven't seen in about 20 years! I cannot wait to see her sweet little babies and meet her husband. AND we are going to Metrolina to antique! It is almost to much for my poor heart to stand! I am sure I'll have lots of photos to share so stop back.

But while I am away, I thought I'd teach you how to make my drop cloth birds nest. 

 Here's the skinny...

 You will need:

threads pulled from a drop cloth scrap

Mod Podge

tinfoil

bowl

newspaper

and about 15 minutes of time to make this then about 24 hours drying time

The first few  photos will show you how to make a textured bowl from the drop cloth threads. It was supposed to be the nest but I realized it made it too tight and too closely followed the form of the bowl once I had removed the tinfoil.  But it actually looks pretty cool as a textured bowl, so we're going to go with it. I think I am going to try this again using a very large, flatter bowl and see how it turns out. My mind is going full tilt into platters, and long trays......

Okay back to the bird's nest...

Gather your supplies

Cover your bowl with the tinfoil

Pour the Mod Podge into a bowl and add a bit to the tinfoil. Add a bit of the threads randomly and pat down. 

I found that using my hands to apply the glue was the easiest and fastest method of application.

Just keep adding and building up the bowl/nest with threads and glue. Try to make sure it is evenly covered and no gaps are too noticeable.

Now let it dry for 24 hours upside down. For the bowls, you will want to apply the glue more heavily but I think it might look better if the outer threads don't get as much. I also used matte instead of the gloss. The gloss might be better for the bowl and the matte is definitely the way to go for the nest.

The next day, turn it over and peel off the tinfoil gently.

You will now let any remaining glue dry before using the bowl/nest.

So once I turned it over and realized my mistake, I rounded the bottom of the bowl with a tinfoil flattened ball and then added a plastic newspaper bag over that to make it less bowl shaped and more nest shaped

I then very loosely added the threads and used the Mod Podge more lightly. I still made sure that the threads were adhered to each other, just more lightly and loosely. 

It will dry much faster since you do not use as much glue. So once the outside looks dry (about 4 hours) turn it over and remove the tinfoil and then reshape the foil and let it dry as above.

I did give the nest a good coating of spray adhesive inside and out to help hold it together but look more natural.

So now you know how this.....

turned into this..... 

So maybe you have no desire to save hundreds of threads and make them into something totally different. But hopefully, this just might make you see things in a different light and the next time you see something, it might just spark an idea that makes you go "Wow, I can do this!"

Now go pull some strings and see what kind of Marionette you come up with!

Always being renewed,

Please see the link party page to see where I link arms with those blissfully beautiful bloggers that host every week. So gracious they are along with these other sweet ladies!