Yep...playing with the mantel again. Our beautiful Snowball bush is in full bloom and how could I resist clipping a couple of branches off and plopping them into my vintage white matte urn? I couldn't, DUH! They almost remind me of little hydrangeas, they are so pretty. We don't really grow hydrangeas here in Colorado; our soil is too alkaline and we're at such a high altitude (over 6,000 feet) and low humidity that they just can't thrive. For a while, we had a couple of hydrangeas in our yard. We planted them near the Colorado Blue Spruce to take advantage of the acidity created by the spruce, but they got all of about a foot tall. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Anyway, back to the pretty white Snowball bush...
As you may have noticed underneath my urn, I like to use pretty old books as elevators. This little grouping is one of my favorites so far. The one on the bottom was a recent ARC find as well. I was all yippie skippie over that because of the great color and the gold pizazz. But I digress.
So forgive my randomness, but I thought I'd share a kind of lame attempt at a redo. Miss Mustard Seed I ain't, but bear with me. I got this cute little no big deal hanging wall basket at the ARC thrift store ($ .50, just the right price!). I liked it, but I wanted to make it look like old wicker.
I did this concoction of water and walnut glaze. I painted it on with a foam brush (which took absolutely forever). It really didn't soak in since the basket wasn't actually old wicker, it took freakin' forever to put on because you had to really get it in all of the cracks and crevices, and oh, did I mention, it looked like CRAP?! I didn't even take a picture of it because it was SOOOOOO bad. So, I decided to try to pull it out with a coat of paint. I watered down a concoction of grayish paint and put it over the awful walnut stain. It isn't what I originally had in mind, but it is OK. I had this really cool wide wired edge linen ribbon which I girded it up with and then I added some reasonably good fake lavender since my lavender is a LONG way from blooming. I hung it on the door to my studio (yes, that's an outside door...my studio is over our detached garage, so it is in a separate building).
I think I like it. Was it worth the effort? Maybe the jury's still out on that one, but at least it is done.
So, after all of this randomness, you probably should pop over to visit Kathleen at
Faded Charm for White Wednesday. There's no doubt oodles of fun posts featuring our favorite color (or is that lack of color? I think COLOR.)
Until next time,
