Wedding Gifts, Chapter 3

In which I share with you projects made of vintage goodness and brag of my sister's crafty talents.

Today I'm showing you some of the gifts that my super talented sister made.  Our friend has a thing for birds (her photography business is Bird On A Wire Photography), so my sister wanted to make an art piece with the quote "birds of a feather flock together."

Ginny bought vinyl alphabet stickers with the intention of sticking them on something, say a canvas or an old painting, spray painting over the entire thing, and peeling off the stickers to reveal whatever was underneath.  After hunting through a little antique store that smelled strongly of moth balls, and well, antiques, we found a cool vintage mirror that we thought could work.

The first step was taking the mirror out of the frame to glue the corners together where they were coming apart.  A little bit of wood glue and some clamps fixed that problem.  Next, she put on her vinyl stickers, and roughed the mirror up a bit with some sandpaper so that the primer and paint would have a better surface to adhere to.

After one coat of primer (the only spray primer we could find in the garage was a super duty red oxide primer) she applied five or six coats of spray paint to make sure the red color of the primer wasn't showing through the yellow.  Then came the nerve-racking part of peeling the letters off the mirror...  We weren't sure if the primer and spray paint were going to stick to the mirror, but it worked perfectly!

I think it turned out really cool!!  What a fun way to spruce up a vintage frame and mirror!  Isn't my sister genius?

As if the mirror project wasn't cool enough, look at this vintage picnic basket she found at the same little antique store!!  It just needed a little bit of work on the inside, and Ginny filled it with some picnic necessities and some handmade napkins and silverware holder!

She removed this original (and icky) liner and lid liner, seam ripped it all apart and was careful to mark which piece was which.  Then she ironed all the pieces and using them as pattern pieces, pinned them to her new fabric, and cut.  All the new pieces were then interfaced with a medium to light weight facing in the hopes that the liner would be more substantial and last a long time.  Lastly, she reassembled the new pretty fabric the same way the original was, using a bit of a smaller seam allowance (due to the facing).

And here is the basket with its new liner!  (See the pocket for the wine bottle?!)  The fabric is Lizzy House "Pearl Bracelet Yellow" from the Outfoxed collection.  Pretty huh?  Gin also made two napkins with the same fabric, using a double rolled hem ("no raw edges for this girl!") and made up the silverware roll which is similar to the fabric rolls that hold paintbrushes or crochet hooks.  (She's made me two fabric holders for my crochet hooks and I LOVE them!!  Remind me to show them to you some time.)

Pretty sweet huh?  It's amazing what you can find in an antique store when you go in with an open mind about the pieces' potential!