Framed Venetian Mask

Are you ready to see what I did with that frame I painted, which I showed you last week? Sorry to keep you waiting, I had two long weeks. Busy at work, conference over the weekend, you know how it goes.

Without further ado, my framed Venetian mask:



I've had this Venetian mask for several years. It was a gift from my Aunt from when she went to Italy a number of years ago. It's really beautiful, and it hung in my bedroom in my parents' house until I moved out.



When I moved in to our current apartment, I brought it with me, to hang it up again. But with my dark purple walls in the bedroom, where I wanted to hang it, I knew something had to be done as it wouldn't really show much.

If you read my first post, you already know that I got this frame secondhand from my parents, and spray painted it white while trying my best to keep those bronze details (again- read the entire post here).



I thought the details in the frame would match well the mask, and would provide a nice white background to make the mask pop. And the goldish/bronze details in the frame match well with the golden ones in the mask. I thought it was a perfect fit!



I was a little afraid at first that the frame was too big for the mask. I tried to think of some way that I could fill the empty space, with jute/twine, or some felt flowers, or even paper flowers. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would look like too much. I often have to downplay my ideas like this, or else everything would look like a circus, haha!



I had also spray painted the poster board white with the same spray paint as I used on the frame, because there were some scratches on it, but it seemed too white and bright, especially against the dark wall. Painting it with some Antique White craft paint dulled the brightness just enough to make it good to go.



I had to change the orientation of the frame, since it was originally landscape and I wanted it portrait. I had to move the saw tooth frame hanger on the back.

It was easy enough, just popped out the nails with a small flat-head screwdriver...



...measured the middle of the frame in it's width...



... and just hammered them back into place.



As for the mask itself, the wire hanger in its back is not centered (as you can see below), so I centered it by eye as best I could, lifted it a little and marked where the wire touched the poster board.



Then I put a small nail on the mark. FYI, the smaller the better. At first my nail was too long and poked out the back too much, so I had to use a smaller one (it's one that is used to nail in those saw tooth hangers). That is why you see a hole above the nail there... small nail wouldn't fit the previous too big hole.



While I'm on this picture, question for you all. I wanted the paint on the poster board to be streak-free, and I had read a few times that using foam brushes diminished those a lot. Well, not for me, the lines that were left behind by that brush were so jarring (you can really see them in the above picture)! I went over with a normal brush afterwards, but it still showed through...

Are there such things as bad foam brushes?? I was so sad when that happened :( . Never using those again. Might also put a new painted poster board because those streaks might really annoy me in the long run. Any advice you can give me on this matter would be very welcome!!!

Anyway, back to the frame... I put a bit of tape on the back where the nail poked through so it wouldn't scratch the wall.



And I was done! Ready to hang in my bedroom.



Here are a few pictures all hung up. It's really hard to take pictures in there when the sun is not shining directly in because of the dark walls, and also because of where I hung up my framed Venetian mask.



From the opposite night stand:



And a view through the mirror, with the lamp on:



I love it! My boyfriend has mentioned a few times that it creeps him out. I ignore him ;)

So glad to have it back up, and it looks so stylish in its new frame, don't you think?










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Giving an Old Frame a New Look

What’s better than “shopping” your home for new decorating items for a space? Shopping your parents’ home!

My parents are going through a redecorating phase and a lot of rooms in their home are getting a facelift. Which means they have a lot of decor that they aren’t using anymore. That gives ME the perfect opportunity to get some free stuff!!

That’s how I got my hands on this beauty.



Of course there was a print in it but I only needed the frame. I don't know what to do with the print, it's from when we visited Nova Scotia and is from a local artist, I don't want to throw it out...

It would be a shame to let that beautiful detailed frame collect dust in their basement, don’t you think?



Only thing was that it was too dark for what I wanted to do with it. I knew I wanted it in my bedroom where the walls are dark purple and it would barely show.

So I decided I’d give my hand at spray painting it. I wanted to keep the golden/bronze details, but I wasn’t too sure how to go about doing that... I thought that if I could spray paint it lightly and immediately wipe it off with a wet rag, the golden details could show through. It seemed like that's how the frame was made to begin with, if you look closely. I stared at it quite some time before settling with that hypothesis haha!

So that’s what I did.

Note: Since then, I’ve found this wonderful tutorial from Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom that explains an other way to do this, so check it out if you're interested in painting a detailed frame like mine.

I set myself up outside in the backyard of our apartment building. I put down a plastic drop cloth, grabbed my white spray paint and tentatively tried to paint this thing.



I sprayed a section at a time, not too thick, just enough to cover it up a bit.



I liked how it wasn't super white and the brown from underneath was toning it down.



Then with a wet rag, I just wiped. If you’re gonna do it my way, you will want to squeeze out the water as much as you can, or else it leaks and dilutes the paint. And you have to work quite fast, the thin layer of paint I applied dried super fast!



You'll learn quickly enough that you don't need to be afraid to remove too much paint, the rag doesn't get much deeper than the surface of the details.



It maybe wasn't the best method, but I still like the end product.



Sure there are sections that are darker than others (where I squeezed water from the rag and it kinda just diluted the paint in that area...), but really not that noticeable unless you know about it, am I right?



I might still redo it the way Scattered Thought of a Crafty Mom did it with the stencil paint cream, but for now I am quite happy with it.



I would've liked to be able to wipe off more so the bronze would show more, but it really dried too quickly for that.



I think I had finally mastered this technique once I got to the sides (which I almost forgot to do! haha!), it's so much more even throughout and the bronze shows through nicely.



Oh and this poor guy got a bit of a paint treatment too, I guess I had it to close by... Note to self: always put everything else away, far far away from the painting zone!!



I'm pretty proud of myself. I was SO scared of messing it up, but it turned out well in the end.



I'll share with you what I did with it next time. It took me a month to finally decide exactly how to use it. I knew what I wanted to put in it, but it seemed just a bit off at first. Finally got to finishing it this weekend, and I'm super happy about it!

Stay tuned...

Edit: Part 2 is up!





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Paper Punched Flower Balls

Today I'm sharing the last tutorial from my Spring Mantle: the little Flower Balls. Yes, that means they are finally all completed!!




These were the result of a pin (this one), curtesy of the blog The Idea Room. When I finally found a cheap flower punch at Wal-Mart (4$!!), this was the first thing I wanted to make. I totally thought they'd be super easy and fun to make. THOUGHT being the operative word.

I set out to do not 3, not 4, but 5 of them! Since, you know, I had 5 different colored cardstock on hand that would go well for spring.



Tools and materials:
~ 2 1/2 inch styrofoam balls, Dollarama, 1$ for 8
~ cardstock, Dollarama, 2$ for 50 sheets
~ Flower Punch, Wal-Mart, 4$
~ hot glue gun and glue sticks, or pins
~ band-aids (for when you get blisters and want to keep going just to finish the last ball haha!!)

Time: 1h30 to 2 hours PER BALL

It's extremely time consuming. And it hurts (if you didn't get the band-aid joke). One ball takes almost an entire 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet's worth of flower cutouts. That's a LOT of flowers. Sit in front of the TV, take your time, plan that this will take a week to do (or several). Or- hey- just make a couple!!

Alright, now that the warnings are over. Let me show you how I made them. They are still fun to make.

In the original tutorial she used straight pins instead of gluing them. Since I wanted to make 5, I knew it would take way too many straight pins, I couldn't find any that were all white, and I didn't want to spray paint them. So gluing it was!

Step 1: Punch. Punch. Punch punch punch. Punch Punch. Punch. Get it? You need A LOT of these little flowers.

Someone reminded me that this would be a job for the Silhouette, which is totally true! If you got one of those machines, use it, it will save you a lot of trouble!!



This is about half of what you need for 1 ball. Of course, the bigger the punch, the less flowers you need.




Step 2: Glue a first layer onto the ball, gluing the flowers as close to each other as possible. You can also overlap a little.



Step 3: Bend the petals of the flowers, it will give more volume and interest to the flower balls.





Step 4: Glue the bended petals flowers in between the previous layer, hiding the white styrofoam ball. Be aware that it's almost impossible to completely cover the ball, there will be some styrofoam showing, but it's not super jarring. Still, you want to foresee where the other flowers will go around the one you are gluing down, so you might turn it a bit, move it a little more to the left or right.



It's really quite simple isn't it? You may want to punch half the flower for one ball, give your finger a rest, cover with the first layer of flowers, punch the other ones, and fill in the rest. Or whatever works for you.








My tale of woe:
It took me 3 weeks to make them all. I did 3 in 4 days at first. Then it was Easter weekend. The next week, I did the 4th one but my finger was really hurting from the blister I got and the blister got worse. The band aids didn't help much, sadly. I had to finish punching the flowers for that ball with my left hand (I WAS gonna finish that ball that day! And I wanted to take the pictures...). I had to wait a week before my finger felt up to punching for the final flower. And I made it!! I think I got a callus now lol.

All in all, I'm happy they are done! And that I stuck to my original plan of making 5. But I'm ready to move on now that my spring mantle is officially DONE for this year!!



If you haven't seen it yet, you can check it out here (I didn't take new pictures with all the flower balls- horrible weather = bad lighting= horrible pictures). The Bunny Silhouette can be found here, and the Wooden Flowers I blogged about earlier in the week.





PS: Are you new to my blog? Can I interest you in staying a little while longer: check out my most popular posts (right hand sidebar ------->) or my Projects Page . Or you can learn a little more about me here, if you wish. Either way, have a GREAT day!!

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