Dry Sinks

Here is a picture of the dry sink in the dining room.  I bought this a few years ago at Spring Run Farm, a really nice antique/primitives store in Lowell Indiana.  It has it's original paint which appears to be a pale grey or really dirty white.  I love it as a decorative piece but not so much as a functional one!  I lived with it in my kitchen for a while but found I needed some flat, washable surface to work on!  I used a porcelain topped table for a while and that worked fine but didn't give me the storage that I needed so I decided to use my porcelain topped cabinet in it's place.

 Here is a miniature dry sink that I made to look like the big one.

Make-Do Quilt Racks

I wanted something different to hang my quilts and coverlets. One day while out antiquing I found an old cement finishers tool and thought it would make a great bracket to hold the rod for the rack. I then found an apple butter paddle and thought it would make the perfect "stick" to hold a quilt. I had Mr. M hang it up and the rest is history. Of course it's like potato chips and I had to have more! I had him cut one of the cement smoothers in half to hold a ladder full of coverlets and then I used two old wood planes to make a third. I think they work great and look really primitive.

Izannah Walker Workshop

I just signed up for the Izannah Walker Workshop! If you don't know who Izannah Walker is you can find out by clicking the link on the left.

Izannah made dolls way back in the late 1800's! Her dolls are reminiscent of the folk art children's portraits of the time.

The workshop is due to the effort of Dixie Redmond who has actually gotten to examine them first hand! She has graciously decided to share her knowledge and experience with the rest of the Izannah loving world!

I would love to own an original doll made by Izannah...but I'm not too keen on mortgaging my house to procure one!

To me and many other doll makers out there, her creations are the holy grail of cloth dolls!

My only attempt at making an Izannah-like doll was a tiny one. She remains undressed to this day! LOL

After

Pie Safe B&A

Here is another before and after. I got this pie safe in 2002. There were no doors on it but as luck would have it, at the same antique place in another booth were a pair of doors that would fit with little trimming! The pie safe was $200 and the doors $100. As you can tell in the pics, the pie safe had been given a coat of new white paint. Rather than strip it I opted to paint over it and had the doors blue color paint matched. I thought it came out a bit too green so I decided to paint over it in cranberry. The unintentional result was a sort of patriotic pie safe. LOL The inside of the doors are a mustard color which I left intact.

After

The finished cupboard.

Before and After

I thought I would post pictures of my kitchen cupboard. When I bought it, it was in need of work but I could tell it had great bones. I could see it was once a built in cupboard because one side was exposed and you could see that they had used old crates on the built in side side! There was no trim on the top or sides so we added that. I sanded and painted it using tan paint and crackle medium under black paint. I sanded the area around the latch and stained it. I was a lot of work but in the end it turned out better than I had envisioned.

Hearts

Heart #1 is velvet with a cloth-waxed rose and a picture charm.

Heart #2 is also velvet with a needlepunched silhouette.

Here's My Heart(s)

Since I haven't gotten around to making a new heart yet here are a couple I've made in the past and a picture of my shadowbox dressed for Valentine's Day. I wish I were better at picture taking but I'll keep practicing!

My Frosty Heart

Brrrrrrrr.....I'ts below zero here in Indiana! I really don't like winter but I can't imagine it being warm all year round either. I guess I'll just hope for above freezing temps to show up soon!

I'm in the mood to make something Valentine-heart related. I have quite a bit of brown velvet and I think it would make a very interesting heart, maybe a pillow. Who knows what I may come up with?