Spray Painting More Stuff!

This past weekend I had high hopes of moving on to Phase Two of our built-in project (finally cutting the boards), but Mother Nature had other plans for us, which included storms both days.  Not wanting to end up with a bunch of soggy boards or be electrocuted, we were forced to move onto other projects.  Sure, I could have worked on some existing projects, like finishing up the slanty bathroom re-do, sewing the shower curtain for the same slanty bathroom, or heck, even clean something, but none of that sounded any fun.  I'm not entirely sure how I defined "fun" in hindsight of my adventures...

Somehow I ended up with a bunch of things I did not like in their current state and thought spray painting them would be an easy fix.  First up: IKEA lantern.  We bought the lantern months ago and stuck it on top of our too-small-for-the-wall entry way shelf thing.  Unfortunately, it became another black-on-black situation and just seemed to disappear on the shelf.  So, I thought, how could I make it pop?  Paint it red!  Poor Buddha is our only bit of red and I thought it would help him feel at home among our blue and yellow accents.  Blue, yellow, and red?  Maybe it's all too primary colors, but I like it think of it more as... modern cottage awesomeness.  So, out to the yard it went and after a couple coats of red spray paint, the lantern is now, well, red and much more visible.  I forgot "before" pictures, but I'm sure you can imagine it as black.

Next up: (now this is an exciting one) plant saucer!  I bought an awesome pot months(?) ago at Campbell & Ferrara's for my amazingly still alive violet, but they didn't have any matching saucers.  Dumb.... which reminds me of this commercial...

We bought a plain terra cotta saucer with the intention of painting it to match and like everything else, it sat untouched for months.  After a few shots of spray paint, I now have a sort of matching tray for my pot.  Although the can promises a reflective, metallic finish, I did not find this to be so.  It is metallic-ish, but not reflective and shiny like the pot.  Oh well.  It's close enough and not terra cotta anymore.

Next victim: picture frame!  I think the only room in our house that hasn't been featured in any projects is our guest bedroom which is too bad because it's probably the nicest room in our house.  We only ever go in there to retrieve extra toilet paper, paper towels, etc. from the closet (since our house has no linen closets... darn you house from 1948!), so I guess it's not on our minds much.  I have been thinking about it lately, though, and have decided I'll try for a apple green and navy blue color scheme and stick with our weird collection of illustrations from old books.  We have our apple green comforter, so to bring in the first touch of navy blue, I decided to spray paint a frame we have holding our awesome bison print.  I also added a "mat" consisting of some fun scrapbooking paper that I just cut down to size and stuck the print on top of.

Final project: Frappuccino bottles!  I was scrolling through Pinterest (another site designed specifically to distract me from doing anything productive) the other day and saw some cute little white bottles/vases and I thought to myself, those look like Frappuccino bottles (as I actually had a Frappuccino bottle in hand).  I washed out two bottles, removed the labels (which took a bit of Goo Gone-ing), washed off the Goo Gone, and headed out to the yard with some matte white spray paint.  I thought, how do I spray paint these bottles easily?  Solution: shove sticks in the dirt, place bottles on top, spray.  However, our "dirt" should just be called "concrete" and I could not penetrate the "dirt" at all.  John suggested using an empty flower pot (the final home of our poor bleeding heart before it met its maker), so I put two plastic shopping bags over the pot to prevent that from becoming white, stuck my sticks through the bags and into the dirt, and placed the bottles on the sticks.  That worked wonderfully and now I have two little vases that look more like ceramic than glass because of the matte finish!  Lovely!

Before!

Nakey!

Gettin' sprayed!

On a shelf!  Looks kind of pathetic...

PS, don't the spray painted bottles kind of sort of look like these vases from West Elm?  The little jug sells for $19!  All four bottles only cost me about $5 and I got to enjoy some delicious coffee treats!

In the end, I now have a "new" lantern, picture frame, and two vases thanks to the miracle of spray paint.  Oh, and enough mosquito bites to make me look like I have some sort of pox.  I think Virginia mosquitoes must be craftier than Michigan mosquitoes because I was completely eaten up before I even realized I was being feasted upon.  Maybe that's why I felt lightheaded and not because of the paint fumes...

Or maybe it's because I feasted my eyes upon these handsome boys...

Apologies for grainy pet photos.  The threat of a flash makes Dexter go: