Copycat Pottery Barn Buffet

 

 

This project began as an amazing find by my bestie, who just so happens to work at an apartment complex and is in a position to grab see all the 'stuff' people leave behind when they move!  She knew that I had been looking for something small to use as a buffet for my back porch transformation and when she saw THIS:

 

 

Well, she knew that it was just what I needed!

 

With her help, I initially sanded it down and painted it white, but I wasn't really happy about how it looked against the brick on the house.  It sort of just blended in and the cottage-style table I had refinished for the dining area was also white.  Ugh - boring!

 

Here's the only picture I can find of it in white, but you can get a feel for what I'm talking about.  At this point, I was also still trying to figure out what to do with the missing drawer front . . .

 

 

And then I spotted THIS beauty in the Pottery Barn catalog last summer and was inspired!

 

 

So . . . I stripped off the white on the top and stained it a dark walnut.  Then I painted a coat of ochre on the doors and sides before covering everything but the inset panels of the doors with a bright green.

 

 

I distressed the whole thing with my sander so that the various colors would show through and rubbed the whole piece down with the leftover stain, to give it a more aged/weathered appearance.

 

 

Just like my flag project, I was able to use paint samples (and already had the white), so this project cost me very little to complete.  Certainly much less than the $999 price tag on the PB inspiration piece!  Here they are side by side.  What do you think?!

 

 

I solved the drawer problem by removing the drawer altogether, painting the inside and using two wicker baskets on the inside instead!  They work great and I didn't lose any functionality of the space!  The baskets were about $7 each.

 

 

I did change the handles on the piece as well, which were regularly $5 each at Hobby Lobby, but since I waited for a sale - I got them both for $5 instead!

 

 

It's turned out to be such a cute and serviceable piece that I just love it!  And with 100 degree weather predicted this weekend, we'll be spending all our time out back (in the pool) enjoying it too!

 

Happy summering y'all!

 

Sharing this sassy project at some or all of these great parties: Under the Table and Dreaming, Totally Overflowing with Creativity, Three Mango Seeds, Classy Cutter, Serenity You, House of Hepworth, Skip to my Lou, LadyBug Blessings, Nap Time Creations, The Style Sisters, Polkadots on Parade, Rae Gun Ramblings,Costal Charm, Not Just a Housewife, Domestically Speaking, The Shabby Creek Cottage, Sumos Sweet Stuff, The Gunny Sack, Gingersnap Crafts, Southern Lovely, Lil Luna, Someday Crafts, The NY Melrose Family, The DIY Dreamer, The Blackberry Vine, Homeworks, The Rustic Pig, Cornerstone Confessions, Kathe with an E, House on the Way, PJH Desgin, Glued to my Crafts, The Crafty Blog Stalker, Seven Alive, Made in a Day, Live Laugh and Love, A Creative Place, Have a Daily Cup of Mrs. Olson, Home and Gardens, It Happens In a Blink, I Gotta Create, Domestic Super Hero, All Pretty Things, Katie's Nesting Spot, 52 Mantels, Truly Lovely, Twinkle in the Eye, Happy Hour Projects, Six Sisters Stuff, Tutus and Tea Parties, Mop It Up Monday, Saturday Show and Tell, Moonlight and Mason Jars, The Scoop, Wow Us Wednesdays, Take-A-Look Tuesday

A Grand 'Old' Flag Project

 

We've done A LOT of fence building in the 10 years we have lived in this little corner of paradise (Texas), which has left me with a lot of old fence boards that I just couldn't bear to part with, just in case I found something wonderful to do with them.  It's one of the things Speed endures loves about me!  I swear!

Anyhoo, these particular fence boards have been waiting for their new destiny since Hurricane Ike blew through in 2008.  And needless to say, they were getting a little anxious!  Until last summer, when I spotted this amazing flag in the Pottery Barn catalog and knew it was time to get to work!

 

So last year I figured out how many boards I would need and dug through my stash to find 8 that were even and relatively flat that I could piece together to make my flag form.  Eight seemed like the perfect number to get my overall dimensions right for a flag, even though I knew it was going to make 13 stripes a bit problematic, but we'll get to that soon enough!

For the construction, I simply took two other fence boards, cut to fit (by me) and screwed them into the boards on the back.  Incidentally, I did take pictures of this last year, but I haven't been able to find them.  No matter, it was super simple!

 

Now for most people, painting would be the easy part, but for some reason I spent way too long just trying to decide whether or not to put fifty stars on my flag.  So long, that one day I arrived home to discover my project moved off the porch and put back into 'storage.'   Well, for those of you with too many kids and too little craft space, you know what that can mean.  Putting an unfinished project away can be the kiss of death!  At at that point last year, July 4th had already come and gone without a finished flag, so I wasn't feeling any real pressure to finish it either.

My how time does fly . . . and another 4th is fast approaching.  It was past time to get this old girl finished!  So here's what I (finally!!) did:

1.  I taped off my blue section using Frog Tape.  LOVE this tape by the way.  It was the first time I'd used it and it really did prevent bleeding under the tape.  Highly recommend this stuff!

2.  Painted my blue section using a color sample of Behr paint in 'Signature Blue.' Super cheap way to get paint for projects like this!

3.  Used my 1" star punch and some cardstock to see about the stars.  Wasn't sold on the stars and wasn't at all sure how I was going to get them painted anyway, so used a Cricut to cut some larger stars from cardstock for a potential stencil.  Hmmmm.  Decisions, decisions.

 

4.  Used the Frog Tape again to mask off first my white stripes and then my red stripes, allowing the paint to dry in between.  With eight boards, I simply couldn't make 13 stripes work, so I forced myself to settle on 12 and keep going.  Those of you who know me, this was a feat in itself!

5.  Ultimately, I just couldn't do it unless I went with the 50, so 50 it would have to be.  First, I experimented with cutting out a star from a sponge and seeing if I liked it enough to use for my flag because I really wasn't looking forward to painting 50 of those babies - nah!  Too sloppy for my taste.  Especially with my crisp lines on the stripes.  The barn red I used is actually Behr 'Geranium' by the way.

6.  The Frog Tape was working so well that I tried to cut a stencil out of it by sticking it to some slick card stock and using my punch to get some really sharp stars.  But after peeling it off the cardstock and trying to stick my stencil in a straight line on uneven fence boards, that was a no-go as well.  I still think it would work, just not for this project - ugh!

7.  Because I am a master re-purposer  (or is it repurposeur?!), I was able to use my tape covered cardstock as stencils instead.  Ultimately, a stencil and a small paintbrush seemed to work the best and didn't take me nearly as long as I was afraid it would, so don't be scared!

And here's my beauty, drying on the porch!  It occurred to me afterward that I already had a white Sharpie paint pen upstairs that probably would have worked even better, but it still looks pretty darn good to me!

My original plan was to distress the whole thing once it dried, but my sander seems to be MIA at the moment, so I will have to post an update when (and if - ha) that ever happens.  In the mean time, I already love, love love how it looks along the side of our garage, facing the pool.

Only five years and one baby later, my fence boards have found a new lease on life as 'Old' Glory and I must say they are lovin' it!

And I am too!

 

Sharing this sassy project at some or all of these great parties:  Under the Table and Dreaming, Totally Overflowing with Creativity, Three Mango Seeds, Classy Cutter, Serenity You, House of Hepworth, Skip to my Lou, LadyBug Blessings, Nap Time Creations, The Style Sisters, Polkadots on Pararde, Rae Gun Ramblings,Costal Charm, Not Just a Housewife, Domestically Speaking, The Shabby Creek Cottage, Sumos Sweet Stuff, The Gunny Sack, Gingersnap Crafts, Southern Lovely, Lil Luna, Someday Crafts, The NY Melrose Family, The DIY Dreamer, The Blackberry Vine, Homeworks, The Rustic Pig, Cornerstone Confessions, Kathe with an E, House on the Way, PJH Desgin, Glued to my Crafts, The Crafty Blog Stalker, Seven Alive, Made in a Day, Live Laugh and Love, A Creative Place, Have a Daily Cup of Mrs. Olson, Home and Gardens, It Happens In a Blink, I Gotta Create, Domestic Super Hero, All Pretty Things, Katie's Nesting Spot, 52 Mantels, Truly Lovely, Twinkle in the Eye, Happy Hour Projects, Six Sisters Stuff, Tutus and Tea Parties, Mop It Up Monday, Saturday Show and Tell, Moonlight and Mason Jars, The Scoop, Wow Us Wednesdays, Take-A-Look Tuesday

Crepe Paper Magnolias

Aren't they beautiful?!

 

And honestly, you can't even tell they aren't the real thing - now how awesome is that?

 

We (I say we, but it was really me) had a need for inexpensive magnolias to incorporate into our centerpieces for the Belles and Beaus Ball last month and even on sale or using coupons, silk flowers were out of our budget.  Unfortunately for her Luckily, my good friend and partner-in-crime Kristi found a paper magnolia tutorial on Martha Stewart crafts that you can watch here.  And once I saw it, I knew that no other flower options would do for my 'Old South' themed soiree!

 

 

Finding the crepe paper was a bit of a challenge so I will save you the trouble of driving to all of your local craft stores, paper/scrapbook stores and florists because they just don't have it - okay?!  Go ahead and head on over to eBay where the lovely Michael from Italian Paper People will hook you up for a very reasonable price and with some free shipping too!

 

 

And you are going to love, love, love this paper!  It was so easy to work with and I can't wait to try it on some other projects!

 

Anyway, it comes on 8' rolls that are approximately 20" wide, so we had to do a lil' cipherin' to figure out how many flowers we would be able to squeeze out of our paper rolls for the tables.  We needed about 100 flowers to cover everything and we ended up using 4 rolls, including 3 rolls for petals and one partial roll for the flower centers.  We were also on a time table, so ordering more paper in advance of the dance wasn't an option.  Fortunately, with just a few modifications from the original tutorial, we were able to get the job done with magnolias to spare!

 

 

Martha's Modified Magnolia Tutorial

Supplies:

• Italian crepe paper in yellow and creme,white or pink
• Template for petals and stamens
• 6" wired floral picks (Michael's)
• Brown or green floral tape
• Scissors
• Scotch tape

Instructions: 

1. Watch Martha's tutorial a couple of times.
2. Don't freak out and look somewhere else - this is the best paper magnolia out there!
3. Skip bleaching your paper and just buy the color you want.  Down here in Texas, I'd never seen pink magnolia blossoms before anyhoo!
4. Use your rotary cutter and mat to make quick work of cutting your petals.  I was able to cut through about three thicknesses easily using these tools.
5. Since I wasn't bleaching, I found that I was able to get a 5" petal out of a strip that was only 1.5" rather than 2", which gave me some extra paper for more petals.  Also, this paper is very forgiving, so a little less was no problem, especially for the smaller petalled flowers (see below).
6. Don't be afraid to make flowers of different sizes.  I modified the 5" petal template to a 4" petal template so we were able to make more flowers with less paper.  We ended up with a mix of both 5" and 4" petalled flowers on our tables - beautiful!
7. A tiny piece of scotch tape will hold your rolled paper stamen together while you add your petals so you can save your wire to wrap around the petals and stamen, securing them together.
8. Nine petals seemed to look just a good as 12, which also meant more flowers and less to fiddle with trying to hold all together until you can get it wired.
9. Floral tape is pretty inexpensive, so don't use it sparingly on these flowers.  It's a little tricky to get the hang of, but you will!
10. We found that cutting and stretching lots of petals first, then assembling the flowers really sped up the process and I was able to enlist the help of my Brownie scout for this part, which is always more fun!

 

In addition to being beautiful, these crepe paper flowers were very durable as well and we ended up with most of them intact at the end of a very fun-filled evening!  All in all, they ended up costing us about 50 cents each, so it was well worth the effort!

 

Sharing this sassy idea at Under the Table and Dreaming, Totally Overflowing with Creativity, Three Mango Seeds, Classy Cutter, Serenity You, House of Hepworth, Skip to my Lou, LadyBug Blessings, Nap Time Creations, The Style Sisters, Polkadots on Pararde, Rae Gun Ramblings,Costal Charm, Not Just a Housewife, Domestically Speaking, The Shabby Creek Cottage, Sumos Sweet Stuff, The Gunny Sack, Gingersnap Crafts, Southern Lovely, Lil Luna, Someday Crafts, The NY Melrose Family, The DIY Dreamer, The Blackberry Vine, Homeworks, The Rustic Pig, Cornerstone Confessions, Kathe with an E, House on the Way, PJH Desgin, Glued to my Crafts, The Crafty Blog Stalker, Seven Alive, Made in a Day, Live Laugh and Love, A Creative Place, Have a Daily Cup of Mrs. Olson, Home and Gardens, It Happens In a Blink, I Gotta Create, Domestic Super Hero, All Pretty Things, Katie's Nesting Spot, 52 Mantels, Truly Lovely, Twinkle in the Eye, Happy Hour Projects, Six Sisters Stuff, Tutus and Tea Parties, Mop It Up Monday, Saturday Show and Tell, Moonlight and Mason Jars, The Scoop, Wow Us Wednesdays, Take-A-Look Tuesday