Hunting Season

With the holidays right around the corner, I am working on tons of things...  simultaneously.  I have one down and many to go so I am going to try and share as I go.

I have lived in the Midwest for 15 years and although I have acclimated to the Midwest lifestyle, I still don't embrace the "hunting" culture.  I don't like guns, I don't like the idea of slaying animals for any purpose and I couldn't imagine hanging a dead animal on my wall.  I don't eat much meat but I do eat meat and I know that is slightly hypocritical and a definite contradiction, but I guess the only way I can justify it is because I am not staring in the eyes of the food I just ate.  Luckily, my husband isn't a hunter like his dad, brother and most of his extended family but I think he still experiences a bit of nostalgia and comfort associated with hunting and alike.  So, when I showed him what I wanted to hang on the wall in our living room, he was psyched!!!  Here is the original item that I saw on Etsy and HAD TO HAVE IT....

The Etsy Store name is Banana Tree Studios and her stuff is amazing!!!  I love her innovative designs and I highly recommend everyone checking out the store.  I wanted to buy this guy on the spot but when I saw the price, I figured I might be able to make my own even cheaper.

When I showed my father in law what I wanted to do, he went straight to work looking for a plastic mounted deer head just like the above for less money and whaaaalaaaa, he found on ebay for a fraction of the price!  So I bought it, bought some spray paint and now I have a guy just like the one above hanging on the wall in my living room... and I LOVE IT!!!!!  I think it is safe to say that I have officially embraced the hunting culture that is so popular here in the Midwest without harming any animals!!  :-)  Here is my process:

This is what it looked like when it arrived, it is heavy plastic with lots of detail, painted with natural colors. (excuse the box, I know it is distracting)

1st coat, primer.  I recommend it when painting anything that you don't think would accept the paint.  It looks awesome white too!!!  But I like color too much to leave it this way.

 Here is the final product!!!   To explain where it is mounted a little better; I have a vaulted ceiling in my living room as you can see at the top of the picture.  The ceiling in my kitchen is not vaulted so this is the section of wall that drops down to meet the kitchen ceiling.

The colors are bad in this next photo, but I gave you enough to see the ceiling in my kitchen to get a better idea of where it is in the house. (the wall color in my living room is a light green apple green, so it is a bit less 'electric' than in the above pictures and it is much more colorful than in the below picture...  I think I need a better camera!)

I was peer pressured into making my Christmas cards this year :-)  even though I tried so hard to talk myself out of it!  So I am back to work on those...   :-)  hopefully I will have a post on those within the week!  

Thrifted

My new favorite activity: Thrifting!    Here are some of my recent finds.

Here is a strand of acrylic beads that I found at an antique mall for $8.  LOVE THEM!!!  Technically not "thrifting" but I still place it in that category

Here is a little carved wood peg shelf that I got at the thrift store for under $1...   I neglected to get a before picture so I took a picture of the back so that you could sort of see the dark wood color that it was before:

And this is after:.....  still not sure what I am going to do with it. :-)

I found this mail sorter at the same thrift store for $2.  It appears to be carved wood but is, in fact, plastic.
This is the before:

 This is the after:

This is completely not thrifting at all but since we are talking about spray painting...  I bought this "cut-out" vase (on the right in the picture below)  on clearance at Jo-Ann Fabrics for $5.  It was a dark hunter green and was really ugly (I also neglected to get a before pic on this one).  So I spray painted it with white primer and decided to leave it white, which highlighted the cutout detail:

A few years ago I picked up this "&" stamp printer block for $1 at an antique mall.  I have some that I kept their natural color, but this one I spray painted white.  I like how some of the old ink color shows through:

Here are 2 resin "plaques" (for lack of a better term) that I bought for $8 ea. at Good JuJu.  Not sure if this would be considered thrifting, but I do.   I bought them in this dark red/orange color with the intention of spray painting them an undecided color.  But when I got them home, they looked great with my wall colors so I left them orange.  I decided to split them up and put them in different rooms.

This one is in my master bathroom:

This one is in my living room:

I also bought this at Good JuJu...  I think that it was around $8, it looks better on, but you will have to wait for that picture.

I bought this dress at the thrift store for $3.  I think I am going to take off the bodice and just make it into a skirt:

I found this shelf at a "yard sale" that was being held at a Catholic School downtown.  It is made out of hobby wood or cheap pine and it was raw wood when I bought it.  I spray painted it white (which took many coats considering it was raw wood).  But it turned out great.  I have it in my son's room on a white wall and it houses his collection of GoGos.  I originally had these in an old printer tray that I hung on the wall, but I like the white shelf on the white wall so that the focus is on all the fun colors of the GoGos. 

Speaking of collections that my son has, here is another shelf that houses another collection.  I bought this shelf last year at a yard sale for $5 (I think?)  It was stained wood and I painted it green to match my craft room.  But when my son started this collection of Lego figures, I decided to move it up into his room.  I thought that I might have to repaint it, but it looks great on his orange wall and matches his night stand perfectly.  I hung it on the wall right next to his Lego table so that he can easily access his figures or "guys" as we like to call them.

I can't take credit for this one, but this is an old school chair that a friend of ours found in a dumpster.  SO we got this one for FREE and I love it!!!!

Here is another plastic "plaque" that I bought a year or 2 ago at Good JuJu.  I can't remember how much I paid for this...  I think it was under $10.  I didn't get a before picture,  but here is the finished product.  

The animals and flowers are still in their original colors.  the tree was a strange black/gray-ish color that wasn't pretty, so I taped off the flowers and animals and I spray painted the tree.  Here is the back that will give you a good idea of what the black/gray color looked like.

For the record....  the next 'upcycle' is a total RIP OFF!!!!   I completely stole this idea from Elsie on this post.  She has this same ceramic figure and spray painted it in this exact Watermelon color.  After seeing her original post about painting her figures, I stumbled onto the same owl ceramic figure in an antique mall that I bought for $4.  I bought the same color spray paint and made one of my own.  Do I feel shameful?  No... because I am fully willing to admit that I royally stole this idea...  down to every detail  :-)  And give credit to the person that I stole it from.

Here is the bottom, to give you an idea of what the figure looked like before it was painted.

This post shares with you 2 of my "loves": my new love: thrifting and an old love: spray paint.  I also like the idea that I am upcycling old things and trying to help save the environment with my decorating.... even if I am polluting a little with the spray paint :-)   Happy thrifting and spray painting!!!!