Custom Family Subway Art - {Tutorial}

Hi everyone, I am so excited to be guest posting (my very first) here at Between U & Me.  A big Thank You to the lovely Courtney for allowing me to crash here today.

I am Kristel, from the Velvet Door, and I have been blogging for just a few months. I started this blog mainly for a way for my family and friends back home to see my house and what I have been up to in trying to decorate it.  I have also realized that it will be a good archive for me to look back and see all the changes I have made to our home.  

Today I will be showing you this subway art that I was able to make.

I have been playing around with this empty wall in my family room, trying to figure out what I can fill it up with.  For a few weeks now, I have been wanting to create a subway art picture, they are everywhere lately, and I love seeing all those city names on them.  I happened to have on hand some leftover MDF from a previous project, just lying in the garage. I had to do some very minor cuttings, to fit all the pieces to make the frame.  Once those where cut, all I used was wood glue to glue them all together.

The back part was really curved, so I had to put paint cans on top to lay it flat, once the wood glue dried, it couldn't curve anymore.

I then used wood putty to cover all the exposed edges.  Once that dried, I painted the inside with two coats of Annie Sloan old white chalk paint.  Then, the fun part begun:

I used my Silhouette to cut out vinyl letters and then drew a line into the board, and placed the vinyl there.

After that was done, I painted the whole thing, even the frame, in black satin paint, with two coats.  Once dried, I removed the vinyl, and was left over with a black frame, and white words, which I sanded to make it look a little aged.  I applied a clear wax at the end to protect it from sticky dirty fingers which I'm sure will be touching this.  And here is the final product:

Furniture Facelift with Chalk Paint - Before/After

Hi everyone! I am so excited to be here today…and so honored! I love Between U & Me…super fun and makes me feel oh so happy!

I am Janel and I blog over at Hating Martha. My blog is all about imperfection and the perfect life chaos and mistakes create. I have a lot of fun doing crafty things, homey stuff, cooking, parenting, and all kinds more craziness. Stop over some time and say hi…I promise to give you my best smile! Today I wanted to show you a quick furniture facelift I did recently. It was done just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas guests to ooh and aah. Cause when you see her…you can’t help it!

Isn’t she a beauty? She cost me $35.00. No joke. I actually wanted to offer more because I felt so bad. But, I sucked it up and walked out with her for cheap, cheap, cheap. I have been seeing chalk paint all the time now that I have joined bloggy world. Bloggers seem to love it. But, it was rather expensive. And I would need to order it. Too complicated. So, I tried the homemade version.

This is the color I ended up with. It was in the oops paint. The whole gallon was $5. I used about 2 cups. So…how much does that end up costing me? Like….75 cents? Ouch. Expensive… Anyways, I was happy because I couldn’t decide if I wanted yellow or orange. Then I saw this in the oops and I said…yellow!

Another view of the color…with a bit different lighting (funny what a difference that makes!)

An Heirloom Classic Revamped - Before/After

Hi, BU&M readers! Today I want to introduce you to Angi from AKM Designs. She is this fantastic new blogger (since October) and she is just amazing! Her tutorials are way easy to understand, her projects are awesome, and her blog is just too cute for words! She has the kind of personality where you just feel like you've known her forever and you're super great friends from way back. Here is a little bit about her and her amazing blog:

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Hi-ya!  My name is Angi McCarthy and I am a married thirty-something (we’ll just keep it at that) year old, working, mother of two amazing young men, keeper of two dogs, two fish and an abundant amount of "mommy can I please keep these" lizards, that spends all of her free time (yeah, right, who am I kidding, who has "free time") re-purposing, painting, decorating and when it all goes wrong, baking!
AKM Designs and Delights blog will be a collaboration of our family, our projects, missteps, brownie baking, cookie eating, wine guzzling, hair pulling, laughter filled, moments of sheer frustration, wanna kill each other, MAN DOESN'T THAT LOOK AWESOME!, journey to making this house our Home!
And now that you know me, I welcome you to... AKM designs and delights! I hope you find something you like!

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  First of all I want to thank Courtney at Between U and Me for having me as a Guest Blogger!  I am so honored to be here!  I struggled with an idea on what I should post about today.  After much speculation, I decided it was time to dive into some serious Chalk Painting!   I was over-the-top a bit nervous with this project as it is a family heirloom.

We’ve had this cabinet for years.  It has sat un-noticed, stuck in a dark corner forever filled with our DVDs.  It was functional.  That’s about all I could say about it.  While I did like the looks of it, I wasn’t in love with it.  I did love the little glass knob on the door; however.  And the beadboard on the back and I REALLY loved the shape of it.  But more than looks, I loved the history of this piece.  You see, it belonged to Mr. AKM’s grandmother.  If memory serves correct, his grandfather actually made it.  I love the way it smells of old wood…not musty and gross…but rather more of history, time and use.  Sometimes I would just run my hand over the top to feel the indentations and wonder how they got there.  The glass on the front cracked during a move across the country.  I went to have it replaced but they could not match the glass.  The glass is the original glass from the early 1900’s.  It’s not smooth like glass is now.  You can see small ripples or waves in it.  I love that about it so I opted to not replace it but instead stuck a piece of tape to hold it together.  I am hoping to find someone that can repair the glass as opposed to replacing it someday. 

So why paint it?  Well, there is this wall in my dining room that has been BEGGING for something to fill it.  I’ve looked all over the place for a small table or hutch but nothing seemed to fill the “void”.  When one day it hit me…I mean like literally HIT me.  Like I opened the cabinet door and it fell over and hit me kinda thing.  Not cool.  But while I was picking up the spilled DVDs I realized what AWESOME potential this had!  It’s like it called out to me…Paint me!  Paint me!  Who was I to deny it it’s true self? So, I did just that, I painted it!

So let’s get on with the pictures shall we…because we all know that is why you are really here!  It’s ok…I can handle the truth.  Here it is.  The piece de resistance (say it with a French accent).  Go ahead, try it again…piece de resistance.

Isn't it GOR-geous?  I am seriously in love with this piece now.  I mean like over-THA-top in LOVE!  I know the lighting is a bit off...Daylight savings has seriously messed with my photo ops!