Toy Box to Treasure Box - Reinvention

 Long time followers know how I love an old box to reinvent ...  this vintage toy box, shown to the left was pretty rough when I bought it.  The hinges had broken through, and the lid was missing a large section of the top ply of the plywood that made up the top.

My husband made me a new top and moved the hinges to make them sturdy, then I took over and painted it white with a nice satin finish paint, that I prefer to chalk paint.

 After the white paint was applied I masked off stripes and applied blue paint.

 After removing the tape from the stripes, I masked off the top and used Hazel and Ruby masking stencils to spell out treasures on the lid.  I thought it could be used as a hope chest, toy chest or a memory box, and the world 'treasures' would apply to any of these uses.

I added polka dots to finish the top, after removing the masking.  I liked it, but it was so pristine looking, I thought it sort of lost the character of its age, so ...

 I first distressed it with sand paper, then I waxed it with clear paste wax, inside and out, and last of all I used dark paste wax to age it.  I like the sheen and smooth finish you get with the paste wax, and the character the distressing and staining added back to the piece.

 We had added French Provincial handles, and I like how they looked painted, then sanded, then stained, as well.

Of course, the interior needed polka dots as well ... now this fine treasure box just needs to be adopted by a new home ... I am listing it as my offering today on Reclaimologists and Other Crafty Chicks on facebook, so perhaps it will have a new home soon.

Thanks for stopping by to watch me do a little reinvention!!

Displaying Tiny Smalls in an Antique Mall Booth

 So what do you do, when you sell antiques, but keep coming up with really cool, but tiny stuff?

This Morton Salt pen clip is a great example.  If you put these tinies in a display, it makes them look cluttered, pieces get lost, or they get broken.

That is when I came up with the idea of bagging them, which protects them, and keeps pieces together, then pricing them with a header ....

 This is what the headers look like ... fleabits explains the small size ...  These fleabits are going with me to flea.o.logy this weekend .... 
As  you can see I made the headers to match the sign I made a couple of months ago to hang in my booth of small crafting items ... this is the blog post that shows the booth.  I have lots more tiny goodies to add ... but I started with 50 I bagged today.

I am using this great rusty reproduction wire shopping basket to display them until I get a nice hanging rack.  Is anyone else fascinated with tiny stuff?

Wonderful White

Yep, flea.o.logy is fast approaching, in fact its a week from this Saturday .... of course that means lots of projects for me to get ready .... so I thought I would share a few.

 

Above are antique bottles with some paper lace, old book pages, torn muslin and great graphics from Graphics Fairy!

 

 I am doing an all white booth this time, so of course that means lots and lots of paint.  I found a few of these garden variety trophies at the second hand store the other day ... the shape of the trophy is great, the base, not so much, so ....

 I removed the base, and concocted one from junk parts I collect and always have on hand ....  I think it even looks better before painting.  (I used E6000 to glue it together)

 

... And here it is with white paint!

 Next I used some old 'mold builder' flexible molds to add some pizazz to some metal pots.  I made these for another project years ago, and it took so long to make them (one layer of mold builder at a time, with several hours of drying time in between) that I could never get rid of them.

 I filled the molds with plaster of Paris, and since the molds are flexible it was easy to wrap them around the buckets.  I let them dry over night, then cleaned up the over flow and painted them.  When the paint was dry I 'antiqued' them, and embellished them.

 I thought they turned out pretty cute!  Definitely going to try this method on some other goodies.

... and last of all is this cool old pine table.  It was probably home made from a pattern in a magazine in the early 1900's.   The wood had darkened, but, had never been finished.  It took just one coat of paint, but I loved the grain on the top so much, I hated to just paint over it.  I thought a pattern that covered some of the top would accentuate the grain in the contrasting areas.  A Chevron stripe was an obvious choice...

 

Well, I will be sharing more of my projects as I continue to get ready to the big sale, so feel free to drop on by!