Diamond in the Rough

This week the kids and I stopped by the local Hospice thrift store to drop off some donations.  There is a drop spot out back, which is actually a room that is off to the side of the store where the donations are sorted through.  I always use my eagle eyes to scan for potential projects, ones that haven't made it out to "the floor" yet, while the man takes my bags and writes me a receipt.  This time nothing caught my eye...until we went into the thrift store. 

This is what I found

A pile of crap?  Well, that depends how you look at it.  When I looked closer at the pile of crap stuff, I realized it was made of plastic and not metal.  Still okay.  Then when I looked under the candle holder I found these:

Let's call these "Diamonds"

So here's the best part.  The pile of crap stuff was marked $3.00.  I thought to myself, well even if this project doesn't work out, it didn't break the bank.  The clerk rung me up and told me the grand total was $1.62.  I questioned her and she told me that anything with a green tag is half off.  SCORE!

I have been working on redecorating a wall in our front room, which you can read about here.  I needed something to put on the right side of wall frame below and these would be perfect.

The first thing I did was place all four diamonds in warm water to soak off the butterfly prints.  The paper was easily scraped off with a knife.  I carefully peeled off one of the papers whole so I would have a pattern to use.

The butterfly paper and my pattern I made from scrapbook paper.

In order to ensure that the spray paint would stick I decided to prime them first.  As for the color, I wasn't sure if I wanted to paint the diamonds a dark brown satin or metallic, so I bought a can of each.  I ended up using Rustoleum's "Unique Hammered Finish" spray paint because I thought with the detail around the diamonds, they should resemble metal.  Due to all of the nooks and crannies, it took quite a few coats of paint.  I continued to spray here and there until the entire thing was covered and no primer was showing.

Not bad, right?

My idea for the middle of the diamonds was to find 4 different pieces of scrapbook paper and put them inside.  I shopped around at JoAnn's and found just what I needed.  After tracing and cutting out the diamonds, I used Modge Podge to glue them on and was left this this finished product:

 

The next step was to play around with the different formations of the 4 diamonds on the wall.  To do so, I roughly traced one of the diamonds on computer paper and then cut out 4 pieces.  I taped them on the wall using painter's tape to see how the placement looked.

I ended up going with option #3.  Here is the final outcome.

Oh, oh, oh...and as for the candle holder in the very first picture?  I have plans to fix it up and use it with my Halloween decorations. 

And might I'd add the cost breakdown of this project?
Candle holder and diamonds = $1.50
2 cans of spray paint = $8.00
Scrapbook paper = $1.00
TOTAL COST = $10.50