Goodness, gracious, great balls of cuteness! CHEAP & easy way to add a custom finial to your curtain rod!

TOTAL SPENT FOR BOTH (around) $9

materials:

foam craft balls

hot glue 

gorilla glue

vellum paper

gold craft paint

decorative button

napkin rings

SO I have been working on a million projects for 3 different clients homes, and I have been chomping at the bit to get something done so I can blog about it. This is not my first choice....but I'm done with it (well almost) they still need to be attached to the ends of the curtain rod, but you get the idea. I have to be extra creative when it comes to curtain rods BECAUSE they cost TOO much $ in my opinion! So with this client I am using the existing drapery rod which is a decorative wood dowel and I will be attaching these as the finials for the ends!

So I started with f regular old foam craft balls.

Then I took strips of craft paper dipped them in a glue/water mixture and layered them on. (The wet one with paper layered on it is on the left.)

I found a decorative button ON SALE FOR $1.97 @ Jo-anns, (actually my sister-in-law spotted them). I thought these could be the end of the finials and the napkin rings could be the bottom and what attaches to the rod.

I thought ok I'll attach everything and spray paint the whole thing white and dry brush on the gold....but I REALLY wasn't digging the look even before paint. So, then I had to get REALLY creative (cheaply BTW)....I thought HMMM, it kinda looks like an artichoke finial.............DING, DING!! Correcto mundo! Thats what it shall be! (BTW the paper wrapping was not a complete waist of time because the vellum attached to the paper quite nicely and gave it a sturdier feel, but I'm sure you could skip that step if you wanted to)

I found my Xtra LG whole punch (which I'm sure you can use scissors and cut out circles) and grabbed some Vellum outta my scrapbook drawer, put several sheets together at once and began punching.

I started to attach each circle at the top with hot glue, and over lapped each one, and tried to stay in line while going around. Then moved down when I started the next row, and just kept repeating til I reached to bottom. I did stop after each row and dry brush on the gold craft paint.

Then I painted the napkin ring gold, and then I spray painted the decorative button white, and dry brushed on the gold over that as well. Then attached both using gorilla glue.

AND like I said I haven't gotten a chance to attach them to the curtain rod yet, BUT I will post a picture of the completed room!

 

Piano Bench into Entry Table -Thrifty Find!

Thrift Find: Piano Bench Re-purposed into an Entry Table

 

 

Piano Bench Found it at one of my thrifty fav's, wasn't sure what it's purpose was just yet but for $5 I'd figure something out!

Plus it still opened up and had a paper log still attached showing the dates when the piano got tuned and oiled, which we put back inside when finished!

The final brainstorm was to make it into a counter height entry/console table custom designed for one of our clients, who's style is tradional/modern/rustic. So first we chopped off the legs, I wasnt happy with the wood finished top so I needed to figure something else out. Walking around in the hardware stores to get ideas for crafts and projects is one of my favorite things, so while in my local home improvement store I walked into the tile isle, and found my table top inspiration!

 I fell in LOVE with this slate and glass tile mix and thought it was perfect for the clients entry way since they have slate tile on the ground as well. This came in 12 x 12 mesh sheets which would have been the easiest to do, but of course I would need at least 3-4 sheets and they were $15 per sheet so that was out, so I found 12 prepackaged 4 x 4 slate tiles for $6, and then picked out single glass tiles for $1 each. Then I went home to convince my hubby to help me cut the tile into thinner strips!

   So after tedious cutting and laying out the pattern we had our top. Which wasn't exact but it was more of the colors I was looking for in the end. So next it was time to figure out the base of the table which had us pretty stumped as well. We are very fortunate to be living on California's central coast where there is so much beauty and WINERY'S, which I have found access to free wine stave's! This is the french oak that is inside of the wine barrel that I'm assuming they help flavor the wine, they come out stained whatever color the wine is which is pretty cool looking! So my hubby thought of this brilliant base and used the staves along with the reclaimed wood we happened to have. I also painted the rest of the wood showing on the piano bench to match the wine staves. 

We were very proud of this project and it also fueled us to do another project in the same entry way again using the wine stave's for an upholstered bench we created. What do you think?