Home Repair Minimalist: Crafting with the Stars

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Crafting with the Stars, Round 2

Round 2 of Crafting with the Stars begins today! You will have 48 hours to vote on your favorite THREE projects in the “Upcycled” category.

Round 1 eliminated three contestants, so there will be nine projects to choose from!

Click on the picture below to be taken to the voting page.

“Upcycled” is code for taking something out-of-date and making it useful and pretty again! Can you guess which project is mine? I can’t tell you yet, but I *hope* it’s one of your three favorites!

For a little extra incentive, if you come back and leave a comment telling me you voted, you will be entered in a UPrinting.com giveaway!

The winner will receive one 18”x24” Poster Print (semi gloss OR high gloss) with 1 business day print turnaround time and free shipping!

Poster Printing is one of the sought after service in the Online Printing industry. It offers photo enlargements for the artistic and crafty customers.

So what are you waiting for?? Go vote here for your favorite THREE projects, then come back and leave a comment telling me you did

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Giveaway ends at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, October 11.

Restriction: Giveaway is limited to US residents 18 years old and above only.

This giveaway is sponsored by UPrinting, no monetary compensation was given and I will receive a poster for hosting.

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Theatre Room Knock-off

The morning I found out I had been selected to compete in Crafting with the Stars, I frantically started flipping through the pages of the Ballard Designs catalog I had in my magazine basket, looking for an idea for my “knock-off.”

When I came upon this page…I knew I had my project.

One of my sisters has a super fun family room that is painted black with a filmstrip wallpaper border and several of those cardboard movie-character cut-outs standing around. Knowing that I happened to have her name for our family’s Christmas gift exchange, I decided she needed a little more movie “bling” for her walls!

The cost for this project was about $30, compared to over $300 if you bought all these pieces from Ballard! Here’s what I used:

One 4’ x 8’ of quarter-inch luaun. Any smooth piece of wood/plywood would do as well.

Clapboard: one piece 11” x 12”; two pieces 1” x 12”

Theatre sign: 30” x 10”

Ticket sign: 12” x 24”

Star: 18” square

Movie reels: 24” square; 18” square; 12” square (two each)

One 1” diameter dowel
About 7’ of narrow molding
Stencils of some sort (I cut mine on a Silhouette)
Various paint (silver, gold, metallic black, off-white, black, red, tan)
One binding post
Miscellaneous screws, painter’s tape, etc.

I cut all of my signs using a table saw or a jigsaw.

Thankfully I have a very good friend who also has much better tools than I do; at his shop we used a bandsaw to cut out the movie reels. TIP: Use a screw to hold the front and back pieces of the reels together, so you can cut them out at the same time. This can also be done with a jigsaw, but your circles may wobble a little!

Yes, I know this because I cut the largest inner circles of the big reel with a jigsaw (after drilling a pilot hole first so I had a place to start). Forstner bits were used to cut the smaller circles, but they only go so big! So yes, my circles may wobble a bit.

I used layers of paint to give the effect of metal reels. It was fun to play with gold, silver, bronze, etc. to get the look I wanted.

I cut my 1” dowel into one-inch sections to separate the front and back pieces of the reels. There is generally one center piece and three or four pieces around the circumference for stability. I liked the three-dimensional look far better than just a flat circle on the wall!

I designed all my sign lettering on the Silhouette Designer. I used a combination of stenciling (painting in the open space where your lettering should go) and reverse-stenciling (painting over vinyl or cardstock lettering, and then removing that lettering to expose the unpainted surface underneath) to paint all the words on my signs.

I didn’t use just any numbers on the ticket…I used my sister’s anniversary!

I used painter’s tape to mark off the stripes on the Ticket sign, and I “pounced” the red paint on to get clean lines.

The ticket sign really came together once the curved corners were cut out. I traced around a circle to get the look I wanted, and then I cut the corners out with a jigsaw. I hand-painted the border on as the last step (well…the last step before distressing and glazing, anyway).

I framed the theatre sign with some narrow molding I cut and glued directly to the Theatre board. It should have taken just eight 45-degree angle cuts for the trim…it took me about 17! I was glad I had bought a little extra for “just in case.”

The clapboard was a fun little project. I cut the ends of the two 1”x12” pieces of wood at an angle using a miter saw (a handsaw and a miter box would work just as well). This is necessary so that the clappers will actually open! I taped them together on the back so the angle of those little chevron stripes would match up perfectly.

The bottom of the clapper strip is glued directly to the board; the top strip is attached with a specialty fastener called a “binding post.” I couldn’t find one at Home Depot, but Lowe’s has them (it cost about $0.80).

The star was the brainchild of my tool-handy friend! I printed out a star from my computer, and then I placed the top point of the star at the top center point of my board. Then I used a yardstick to extend the lines on the star onto my board—that way there was no tricky angle-measuring! I cut it out with my jigsaw as well.

It is difficult to tell from the photographs, but the little movie camera is actually on a separate 4” circle that I painted and then glued to the star. Just another way to add dimension and interest to the piece.

Whew! There you have it…the complete theatre room set.

I didn’t wait until Christmas to give my sister her present. I didn’t think it sounded like much fun to read about it on my blog and not get to see it in person! So when I saw her this past weekend, I gave her a “sneak peak” of my Crafting with the Stars post and brought out all the pieces while she was reading.

It was great fun! I think she enjoyed celebrating “Christmas in October.”

I know I did!

Thanks for wading through this very long tutorial with me! ********************************************************

This project featured at House of Hepworths.

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Linking up here and The DIY Show Off.

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Crafting with the Stars, Round 1

Round 1 of Crafting with the Stars begins today! Please click on the picture below to be taken to the voting page:

You will have 48 hours to view and vote on 12 *amazing* knockoff projects! The top 9 projects will move on to the next round.

I can’t tell you which project is mine until all the votes have been tallied, but please take a minute to go look at the projects!

Need a little encouragement? How about a giveaway?

After you vote, come back and leave me a comment telling me that you did, and you will be entered to win my “fall” beadboard pennant banner (which is actually pale yellow, not white as it appears in the picture), shown below.

What are you waiting for?

Click here to vote on your favorite Knockoff!

Giveaway ends when the voting ends: Tuesday, October 5, at midnight.

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A Beadboard Garland for Fall

I love the look of beadboard, and I’ve been using it for signs for months now (you can see some here), …but I also love the look of pennant banners, so I thought, “How about a beadboard pennant banner?”

Why not?

The first step is to draw out your pennants. There is no magic formula here, just do whatever looks good to you. My pennants are 7” long, and 5” wide at the top. I marked the top and bottom at 5” intervals, except I started the markings on the bottom after coming in 2.5” (because that’s half of 5). Then I just had to connect the dots!

Once my lines were all drawn, I used a table saw to cut along the lines. Note: You could also use a jigsaw if you don’t have a table saw!

Once you get the first piece off, you can use a fence to cut your parallelograms easily…

…but that’s not going to help when it’s time to cut the triangles off!

I ended up with ten little triangles. Rather than drill each triangle separately, I stacked them and clamped them together. Then I could drill five at once! This is a great time saver.

I base-coated all my triangles with Rustoleum Heirloom White spraypaint, but then I decided to get further color inspiration from candy corn! I used acrylic craft paint, and didn’t even worry about getting lines perfect or anything. Have you ever seen a perfect candy corn?? Another Note: OK, so now I know that candy corns are actually yellow-orange-white and not orange-yellow-white. Sorry! I don’t actually eat them! Bleah.

I used black acrylic paint to stencil on letters…

…and the next day I distressed and glazed all my little pennants.

I tied the pieces together with twine, and anxiously hung my banner on my buffet so I could admire my handiwork!

Whoops!

***blush***

Oh, that’s much better!

I like the little-bit-faded look the pennants have.

No tricks for me….just treats, please!

Want some other ideas for an Autumn banner? Well, how about a banner that just says “autumn”? The one below was actually the first one I made. For this one, I use vinyl as a “reverse stencil,” and sprayed the pennants with Rustoleum Summer Squash paint. You may notice that these triangles are all equilateral, so you can make any size/shape triangles you like!