Painted Bottles and Mason Jars

One day last week I saw a post on Facebook about some painted Mason Jars. I've seen painted bottles before, of course, but I really liked the look of the ones I saw last week. So imagine the serendipity of the moment when I was in Michael's over the weekend and happened upon some chalky finish paint by Americana Decor. It was perfect for using on bottles to give them that vintage and aged look. I especially loved the pale mint green color, so I bought a jar of it and decided to give it a go on a couple of things in the studio yesterday.

This first pic shows the paint I used and the painted Mason Jar that I did. I didn't add anything to this jar yet, other than the paint. But I LOVE the finish of the paint. Please note: the color in this photo is NOT accurate. It really is a very pale/pastel mint green color in real life, which I love. So you just have to kind of imagine it the way it should be.

Americana Decor also has some finishes you can purchase as well to use on top of the paint, but I just opted for the paint this time. I love the color and the chalky finish! I also painted a small milk bottle and added some pip berries and jute to it, to make it a bit more prim looking. Again--remember that this isn't blue, it just looks like it in the photo (I think they did have a blue paint option, but I liked the green more).

I'm going to try this on something wood, I think, at some point. It would look great on a shelf or a picture frame or something like that. But I do love the look of the chalky finish on the glass, and these were fun to do.

Primitive Sunflower Topiary

As I was trying to decide what craft project to do in the studio this weekend, I was walking around the house and spied some grungy fabric sunflower bowl fillers I had in a bowl on my dining table. I grabbed one and decided I would use that somehow in my project, though I didn't know how at that moment. After I got into the studio and looking around in my stash o' stuff, I found a Rusty Tin bucket and knew then that a Primitive Sunflower Topiary would be perfect.

I used an old stem from some Pip Berries as the sunflower stem. I used a couple of pip berry sprigs as the leaves. And to the rusty tin bucket I added some Fall-colored homespun for an extra pop of color. Spanish Moss surrounds the flower, which I use a lot in my crafts. And voila: Sunflower Topiary.

Pumpkin Pickins

I bought some little faux pumpkins at Wally World during the week, so I thought I'd play with them in the studio a bit over the weekend and see what I could do with them. My intention was to grungy them both up to be primitive. But I decided to do different things to each one in the end and came up with two very different pumpkins.

This first one is kind of grungy. I had intended to put cinnamon on it, but then I changed my mind and decided to play with ink instead. I used a dark brown color first because the pumpkin was a very bright orange color. Once I'd gotten that on I took an orange-ish color of Distress Ink and added some highlights back in where needed to contrast with the darker brown. I also used just a wee bit of orange acrylic paint in the pumpkin seams to brighten them back up a little. The result is below--and it does have a bit of a grungy appearance, just not as grungy as I'd  normally do.

 This next photo shows the two inks I used to create my grungy effect on my pumpkin.

This next pumpkin isn't really grungy--and not really even prim. LOL. But I had fun making it anyway. I used some mat medium as my adhesive, and then I sprinkled on some bronzed mica flakes for a shimmery effect. It's definitely got some sparkle going on! Kind of looks like a Fall fairy came along and sprinkled on some fairy dust. :)

These were fun little pumpkins to make. I love Fall, so it's always fun to make more Fall crafts.

Grungy Primitive Pumpkin

I saw a post on Facebook recently that showed how to make a small pumpkin using a roll of toilet paper that had been cut in half width-wise, then wrapped with fabric strips. I wanted to try it out for myself, but I really didn't want to waste an entire roll of toilet paper to do it. What can I can say--to me, toilet paper is a valuable commodity. ;) But I knew I had some Styrofoam balls tucked away in my studio, so I decided to give one of those a try. And this was the result. 

I cut a small slice off the top and bottom of the Styrofoam ball to help it sit flat, and look more like a pumpkin. Then I used a fat marker to hollow out a column down the center of the ball, so that I could wrap the fabric strip. I just shoved it down the center of the ball and pushed out the foam.

I used one very long strip of torn fabric--it wasn't muslin, but I'm not even sure what kind of fabric it was. It's just what I had on hand (it's what you see under the pumpkin in the photo as well). I tucked the end of the fabric into the center of the ball and then started wrapping the strip of fabric around and around, overlapping each strip a bit as I went all the way around. Once I got the ball all wrapped with fabric, I tucked the remaining end in the center of the ball too. I somehow managed to tear a strip of fabric that covered the entire ball. I don't think I could have planned that--it was just luck. :)

After that, I picked two colors of spray I had in the studio--one was Glimmer Mist by Tattered Angels in Copper; the other was a dark brown color--I believe it was by Mr. Huey's. I used the Copper color first, since it results in a nice dark orange color on the fabric. I sprayed it all over the pumpkin. Then I just added some of the brown spray here and there to give the color some variation. I dried it all with my heat gun, then went out into the yard and found a stick that could be my pumpkin stem and I stuck it in. 

Voila. Grungy Primitive Pumpkin! You could really make several of these fairly quick and they'd make great table decor for the Fall. You could do more to embellish it, of course. Add some rusty wire, or a leaf, or pip berries, or any number of things really. But I was going to for simplified here. Primitive and rustic. Sometimes that's really all we need.