mirror

Plant stand, turned upside down shows old wear and tear.

Hello Old Friends,

It has been a while! I have moved out of my house for the renovation and am firmly ensconced in my new digs, although I am not fully settled in. More about that in another post.

For now, I am posting something I should have posted this summer but didn’t have the time. Some of you will remember an upside down plant stand for a vintage ice bucket champagne holder. I walked by it one day and thought “wash stand with vintage towel” so I grabbed some cotton twill and fashioned a towel holder and used a lovely old mirror and voila.

I hope you find some inspiration in the simple things.

Always,

Cindy

Stunning on it’s own, as is.

An old ironstone pitcher, basin and vintage towel casually slung with a towel bar fashioned out of make do cotton twill.

Using things I had, around the house just as I found them.

The Change of Seasons

Garden evergreens, fresh red berries and a mirror star tree topper for the transitional vignette.

Not quite Christmas and not quite Thanksgiving. My fresh Christmas greens don’t ship for another two weeks, but the white pumpkins I bought for Halloween are still fresh so I put together a transitional mantle that includes the white pumpkins, fresh evergreens from the garden and bright red berries.

I hope you find some inspiration.

xoxo.

Cindy

Distressed mirror star tree topper offers a vintage touch.

Vibrant reds against fresh garden evergreens.

The white pumpkins signal fall and winter along with a distressed star shaped mirror and winter arrangment

The white pumpkins signal fall and winter along with a distressed star shaped mirror and winter arrangement

Mercury Glass Patterned Votives – How To.

Re-posting this blog article because it is one of the most requested articles from my site. I am still thinking about the variations on this technique and when I will have time to share them…

In the mean time, I hope you find some inspiration.

Always,

Cindy

Twinkly Light. Just lovely.

I like a little mercury glass for that touch of elegance that it brings. Flash photography can’t quite showcase the twinkly quality of the mirrored paint effect, however, in person…it is just lovely.

Since my post yesterday, I have gotten quite a few emails asking about the technique used to make this antiqued, mercury glass votive. I was planning to post this later in the week, but have moved the post up a couple of days because of the requests.

Let’s get started!

Here is what you will need for this project:

Glass vessel
Looking Glass Paint (online or at Walmart in the spray paint section)
Embossing folder/machine
Paint tape
HVAC tape (also called foil tape, it is 2″ wide and is found at home center stores, like Lowe’s)

Before you get started there are two important things to follow explicitly in order to have success, and trust me on this…I made these mistakes a few times:

When you have applied your foil tape to the glass: BURNISH, BURNISH, BURNISH. Simple finger pressure will do, but if you don’t press down on every part of the foil, you risk not having a clean image remain when you pull the tape off.
When you paint the glass vessel, go very, very lightly on the paint. Micro bursts of paint with very thin coats. You don’t want more than two coats and don’t try for heavy coverage…the tape won’t be able to remove the negative space so that the image emerges.

Lastly, no worries. If you mess up, just scrub the inside of the glass with a sponge and some elbow grease and the paint will come right off and you can start over.

As a foot note for this project, I tried this technique with other paints…but it doesn’t work. I tried using a copper paint for a fall project and regular spray paint has different properties and the tape usually takes the entire spot of paint off with no image remaining.

Just have fun. This is a technique that has a lot of possibilities…only limited by your imagination!

Send me pics of your finished product and I will post in a future blog article!

Always,

Cindy