Shabby Shadowbox

I've really been wanting to do a little project with a bird nest to tie in the decor of the second master bath to the bedroom.

I already shared some artwork that's in the bedroom, so I thought a nest would work well without being too matchy-matchy.

It started with this shadow box. I really wanted a white one, but the only ones that Hobby Lobby had that would be deep enough for this project were black.



Luckily, I just happened to have some white acrylic paint. :)

I did a quick little paint job on it. I didn't want it to look too perfect, so I left it at the point where some of the background was still showing through. It would look nice with a solid white too or a complementary color, but it's all about personal preference.

To complete the project, I gathered the cast of characters below, plus a hot glue gun. (What would we do without hot glue guns?!)



The shadowbox was 8X10, but when I cut the paper down to that size, it was a little too snug, so I trimmed it down a little. I actually trimmed it a little too much, but thank goodness I wasn't trying to make it look perfect.

After I trimmed the paper down, I hot glued it to the backing of the shadowbox. Here are my helpful hot glue gun hints for this project:

1. Have extra glue sticks within reach
2. Don't try to glue the whole surface at once. Line up your paper like you want it and start in one corner, pressing it down as you glue it.

In other words, learn from my mistakes.

Here's the final product:



Linking with:

Make Bake Create

Artwork Redo

We've been working on staging our house to sell it (don't you just love moving?!), so we've been buying artwork and decorations.

We're decorating the second master in kind of a shabby chic style, so I've been looking for something to hang on the wall in there. I found a few things online, but I just wasn't ready to commit to any of them.

Then we went to Hobby Lobby and wandered and wandered...

And my husband found this (on clearance!):



He has a good eye. The color wouldn't work, but we looked it over and decided we could take it apart and paint it.

We painted the birdcage "Catalina Mist" and the wooden part is a cream colored crackle paint. As an aside, we should really learn to READ the paint cans because the crackle paint was supposed to be step 2 of a 2 step process. Whoops! It didn't crackle all that much, but we were ok with the results.






Before and After:



If only the walls weren't white, but I'm not painting them just to move! :)

Linking here: Homemaking Linkup
Make, Bake, Create
Two Girls and a Party