May is soldiering on and so is my household crafting! I have
to say I am getting really excited about this task and I have well and truly
got crafting fever! It’s a relief as some months ago I was having a complete
crafting lull and wondering if my creative streak had become dormant.
Thankfully not, if not for my sake for the sake of my spare room which is
stuffed with random beads, ribbon and fabric swatches.
After my last blog I decided to share my work with the newly
published Reloved magazine on
Twitter, and to my delight they re-tweeted my blog. So if you have found me via
Reloved magazine then welcome!
Recently I have been putting down the sewing needle and
picking up the paintbrush. Ever since I moved into my house I had aimed to
paint the kitchen. I’d seen a gorgeous colour of pink in B&Q and bought 2
tins without actually planning the room it would be used for. About 12 months
ago I painted a swatch on my kitchen wall and thought yes.........this is the
colour I’ll use to paint my dining part of my kitchen. It has taken me until
now to do it, although to be honest I think it was more the task of deep
cleaning the grimy greasy walls that stalled it for so long, plus the fact that
at present our overhead extractor fan only actually extracts to the top of the
cupboards........not so pleasant, however I’m happy to say that is also in the
pipeline to be changed.
After my bookcase revamp in the kitchen I decided just to
get the paint brushes and rollers out and just paint the wall. I’m pretty happy
with it, I mean its pink but it’s a grown up, sort of dusky vintage pink
which happens to compliment all my other revamps quite nicely.
I also want to
share with you my other paint related project, my doily screen printed table!
This I’m particularly chuffed about. Read below to see exactly what I did to my
new glamorous kitchen table.
How to Make a Doily Kitchen Table
What you will need:
A piece of wooden furniture
Sandpaper
Soapy water
Cloth
Water based paint suitable for wooden interiors x 2 colours
Rollers/brushes
Paper doilies
Screenprinting kit (screen and squeegee)
Varnish
1. Once you have found the piece of furniture you wish to
revamp you first need to prep it before you can paint it. First give it a wash
with some soapy water to lift off any grease and dirt and dry it down. If the
piece has been painted or varnished before you need to use sandpaper and sand
all the paint or varnish off. This will help key the surface and give the paint
some grip. Once you have sanded your item give it another wipe down and leave
to dry.
2. With my design I wanted to create a two colour effect so
before I could screenprint I had to paint a layer of white paint as a base. I
just used water based paint designed to be used on wooden interiors. To keep
the paint looking even I used a mini roller compatible for use with water based
paint, painted a thin layer and then did a second coat. Now comes
the waiting game, you can’t do the next part until it is completely dry so
lights out and let it dry overnight.
3. Now for the fun part! Take your doilies and lay them on
top of the table, play around with your design. Try a variety of shapes and
sizes and don’t overcrowd your table too much, you want a nice balance of the
white and coloured paint. Paper doilies work well for this project as they are
thin and act as your stencil, don’t be tempted to try it with a fabric doily,
not only with you ruin it but the thickness of the material means that you
won’t manage to get a nice neat and sharp print.
4. Once you are happy with the layout you can begin to
print, remember that the part of the table which the doily covers will remain
white, whereas the rest of the table will be the colour you selected to
screenprint, in my case duck egg blue. If you are not familiar with how to
screenprint you can find good tutorials by googling screenprinting tutorials.
5. Ideally you should have a screen which is large enough to
cover the area you want to print, unfortunately my screen wasn’t so I had to do
a bit of fiddling about – it also means that you should really wait for your
first side to dry before you print the next side – I couldn’t wait that long!
The key thing is that when you are printing you want to be firm and even, you
want to make sure the paint goes through the screen and the doily cut outs
without spilling through too much and producing undefined lines. You will
probably need to pull the squeegee across your screen and back again in 2
cycles.
6. Once you have printed, CAREFULLY peel back the screen,
you may find that some of the doily has stuck to the table, don’t worry just
very carefully peel it off. If you need to touch up any bits use a paintbrush
and blend the paint in, leave to dry and then coat with some varnish to help
seal the design in. There you have it! A beautiful feature table perfect for
afternoon tea and cakes. As you can see the colour compliments my wall and
previously painted chairs wonderfully.
Pssst, I have one more really quick doily make! This time
you use crocheted doilies that you can find from markets or charity shops to
make a beautiful decorative bowl.
What you will need
A crochet fabric doily (not paper ones)
A bowl
A can of spray starch (you can find in the laundry aisle in
the supermarket)
1. Ideally you should use a small doily as you will be able
to make a smaller more robust bowl, I only had a large doily and although very
pretty my bowl is very delicate to use. Wash your doily and iron it .
2. Find a bowl that you can mould your doily around, this is
how you will form your doily shape. Put the bowl face down with the base facing
upwards and pop your doily on top.
3. Wet your doily in starch, this will harden as it dries
and sets the shape. I needed a lot of starch and soaked my doily, however for a
smaller doily you will not need as much. Spray enough to wet the doily, to
create a pinched edging for the top of your doily bowl work your way around the
doily and pinch together and mould the doily to show you want your bowl to
look.
4. Leave to dry, you will need to leave until it is
completely dry, this could even take longer than overnight so be patient.
5. Once dry take it off the bowl and there you have it, your
very own doily bowl! The beauty of this project is if you get fed up or it
starts to lose its shape you can pop it in the washing machine and start all
over again.
Ahhh doily heaven!
