Ikea Hacked Antique Table

Ahhhhhh...A long overdue blog post. It feels sooooooooo good to blog again!

Keeping this part super short...not sure if I've mentioned, but I'm 35 weeks pregnant AND we just moved to the dream home a week and a half ago. Being this pregnant and moving at the same time are not really compatible, but we're making do.

Anyway, when we found our lovely new abode, I had the opportunity to have my very own breakfast nook. So exciting. I've always wanted one of these. We've had the perfect table in storage for years. It's from the early 1900's and was the husbands grandmothers. So it was a family heirloom.  The only problem with this was that it had 5 legs. It's a round table with 5 legs, which I thought was weird. The legs were so short that I couldn't even sit at the table without my legs crossed, so we never used it. It's a shame really, to store such a nice table for 10 years without using it...

I wanted a pedestal table with a white base and woodish top. It annoyed the crap out of me that I had the top, but not a base. It took some persuading, but I finally convinced the hubby to help me. So I went on Ebay, to every antique store that I could find and Craigslist and I couldn't find a pedestal that I liked. Most of them were broken, had mismatched legs or were meant for a small table.  I wanted the table to look like THIS...but didn't exactly want to spend that amount of money while still storing a similar table in my house, because really, that's just dumb and hoarderish.    

My breakfast nook table inspiration.

The super handy husband and I were popping around Ikea one day when I stumbled upon this gem. So perfect in so many ways. May I take this opportunity to introduce you kids to the fantabulous blog IKEA HACKERS? These people are amazing and really, I want to be just like them. I was so inspired to hack when I saw this table so we bought it. 

The table that inspired me to become a hacker.

I neglected to take photos of the actual hack, but there were a few things that took place beforehand...first, I had to find paint that matched the pedestal, so I took a piece of the wood from the table kit to Home Depot, they put it through their little computer thing a voila, I had paint that matched perfectly. Score!  Then the hubby put the table together. It turned out to be a good thing that we bought the entire table instead of just a pedestal. There was a pedestal mount that made it super easy to attach to the top. Once that was done, he painted the first coat on the lip of the table. Now, I know there are going to be some people who are appalled that we painted an antique table and Ikea hacked it. Get over it. It looks great and really, I wasn't ever going to use it in it's original form. At least it's out of the closet (making more room for my shoes).

Once it was put together. Ignore my mess...we're moving.

After 2 coats. It looks superb. It's not a great picture, but it's all I got. Sorry!

I think that our very first Ikea hack turned out pretty well.  The chairs are antiques (that I did NOT hack) from Seattle, they were gifted by my very own beastie Courtney.  Ignore the ugly tile, that will go away eventually, in the mean time, I'm in search of a round rug...

DIY Rubber Stamp

I can't believe that I never blogged about this...It's my moose stamp that I made myself months and months and months ago...Last Christmas (2010) I fell in love with this moose paper punch that I can no longer find on the Paper Source website. I hope they didn't discontinue my sweetie...Anyway, two examples of Moosie are down there. I made a lovely lady walking her moose and kraft gift tags for that year.

The only bummer about the moose punch was that it was so tiny...I needed a bigger one.  Paper Source at the time was holding a lovely "make your own rubber stamp" class. I think I was in the middle of IVF treatments and I needed an escape, so onto the class I went.

In order to make your own rubber stamp, this is a great kit. You can get all of the components at Michael's by themselves, but for the DIY Rubber Stamp virgins, this is great. 

Decide what you'd like to make. Remember that whatever image you use, it will be opposite once you stamp with it...so if you're using text (for example) make a mirror image of it in Word or Photoshop. The kit includes tracing paper, trace your design onto it...

Then put the tracing paper onto the rubber and rub the design onto the rubber. The lead from your pencil (oh yeah, you need to use one of those) will rub off.

Use the scrapers to cut away the negative space. There are two different sized scrapers in the kit, a smaller one for more detailed work and a bigger one that acts like a shovel for the larger spots.  

Test out the stamp to see where you need to get rid of more negative space. You can see on here that I had lots to go on this test shot. Oops!

Voila! It's a moose!!!!!

Baby stuff!

Since I'm pregnant (finally-that took awhile) I now have a slew of baby items that need to be crafted and so this is what I've been working on for the past few weeks...

These are the petal enclosures that I created for my baby shower. Yes. I made my own baby shower invitations. I've been waiting for years to get pregnant and I was so excited, I just couldn't resist. The enclosure is THIS one from Paper Source and I painted swirls on it with my kindergarten watercolor set. Oh, I chose the ducks instead of the flowers as they looked more baby-ish. THIS is the duck paper punch that I used, then I attached them with brads and used bakers twine to close them. Super easy. 

My thank you for buying me baby things cards. I made these using my super fabulous Epic Letterpress.  I'm all into blind embossing right now, so that's what I did. So fun.

Envelopes for the cards. I lined them with discontinued baby feet paper from PS. The envelopes themselves are vellum and they're pink (super fitting since i'm having a GIRL) and I love that they're see through. They look very chic. 

There are a few other things that I need to get done. We're hopefully moving soon, so the craft room is packed into boxes that are currently split between the 1st and 3rd floors of my house. If we don't move, the craft room will be Baby D's room...so either way, craftiness is being repositioned in my house. Or another house. Rambling...

Given my new love of Pinterest and my hearts board, I might start making hearts again. Who knows. It might be fun. It was supposed to be a 365 hearts project, but those 365 don't have to be consecutive days do they? Methinks NOT! TTFN!