Thrift Store Finds: Before and After

Last week I posted some pictures of items I picked up at various thrift shops around town.  Most of the items I had a vision for and have spray painted spruced them up and put them in their place.  If you click on each collage, it will enlarge.

 The flower was painted pink to bring out the accent color in our new curtains.  The bird was painted Heirloom White to fit in with the other birds I have been "tending" to, the lantern was painted red to use for next year's 4th of July decorations, and the candlestick was painted a darker brown to get rid of the orange tint in the original.

 I picked this frame up last week because it was in good shape and I liked the beading detail.  I ended up spray painting it black and using it on the mantel (see picture below.)  The bird print was a free printable found here: http://printable.tipjunkie.com/printable-birds-and-cages/

 The beading shows up better in this picture and see the pop of color behind?  Love it!

 

  Here is the bird with another bird that we inherited from my grandparents and thought we'd never use.

So here is another before/after project I recently completed.  Years (and I mean years) ago Mark built a frame to hold a piece of scrap mirror we had found.  We hung the mirror above our fireplace as we were trying to fill the walls without breaking the bank.  Slowly over the years the frame began to give way.  As you can see in one of the pictures below, it got a bit wonky.  (Who uses the work, wonky? I dont 'know, but I like it.)  Not to fear...with the help of a couple of L brackets, some wood putty, and the sander, all was fixed.  I painted it the base color of our new curtains and ended up not putting the mirror back in.  And a little confession here:  What happened was that after adding the L brackets and getting rid of the "wonkiness" the mirror no longer properly fit in the frame.  No worries...I had other plans.  Remember the sheet music flowers I made?  I now had a home for them.  In addition to the music flowers, I added a piece of old sheet music from my inherited collection along with a framed saying by Ronald Reagan.  I had the flowers and sheet music hung and realized I needed to fill in the space above the sheet music.  With the help of a thrift store frame I had packed away, black spray paint, some sheet music, and black scrapbook paper I created my own piece of art.