Trophy (Painting) Wife

Last week, I finally got around to throwing up a collage wall and making a lamp out of string lights in Sebastian’s room.  If you missed that post, go check it out.

A few of the things up on that wall are some trophies from Anthony’s years past – Little League baseball years past.  I asked him a few years ago if he’d allow me to spray paint them and I got a shocked face and a stern, are-you-crazy, “no”.  Then I tried again last week and, maybe since all these guys have been doing is chilling in Sebastian’s closet, I got a “sure”.  So, I took that affirmative and ran with it…straight outside…with a few cans of spray paint.

Have you a few old trophies laying around?  Maybe you’ve passed some by at your local thrift store?  Well, if so, here’s how to make them as exciting today as they once were.

Trophies are put together really simply.

Basically, they’re a bunch of pieces and parts stacked on top of eachother with a long, threaded rod down the middle and that rod is secured at the bottom with a nut.

Unscrew that nut and everything will just slide right off.

The super cool thing about Anthony’s trophies is that each base is marble, carrerra marble to be exact.  I know so because a tiny sticker on the back of each told me so.  So fancy, right?  Well, there’s no way I’m going to paint something that isn’t ugly in the first place.  So, I grabbed all the plastic to be painted and left the marble as-is.

I gave all of the pieces a good washing with some dish soap and a toothbrush before I painted them.  They were a tad dusty from being stored so long.  After they were dry, I took them outside and laid them all out on a big piece of posterboard that was headed for the trash.


Then I gave each piece a coat of spray primer.  Plastic tends to be pretty finicky when it comes to holding paint (ahem), so priming it first ups the chances of it really sticking.

I painted one side of each piece, let that side dry, and then turned everything over to paint the other side.

Two of the trophies I left just primed – the gray and white.  I wasn’t sure what color I wanted to go and the only actual color I have in my spray paint stash right now is yellow.

Once everything was nice and dry, I put the trophies back together the same way I took them apart – by stacking them in order over the rod and securing it all by putting that nut back on at the base.  Except, in putting them back together, I turned the marble bases around backwards so that the metal plate parts with all of the writing were facing the back and the fronts were just plain marble.  See?

(So I was thinking while I was putting these things back together, about how awesome it would be to grab a few marble-laden trophies from a thrift store, take them apart to remove the marble, and stack the marble pieces all together to make a lamp base.  You could put all the big pieces at the bottom and small at the top or you could stagger them so they’re all different.  Either way, it be a really cool and cheap way to get a marble lamp!  :D  )

Had I a longer shelf, I probably would’ve painted more trophies and maybe that’ll eventually happen anyway.  Until then though, I really love how these turned out.  It’s fun when you can redo and repurpose something but even more fun and special when it’s something of sentimental value that probably wouldn’t have been used much less displayed anyway.  :)


All thanks and gratitude to my trophy husband for being so good at baseball as a wee lad, for without his mad skills (and eventual reluctance to my painting idea), this post would probably never have been written.  :)

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The Kids’ Room–Before & After

Done in my best game show host voice…

IIIIt’s time for another rouundd of BEFORE ANNNND AFTER! 

We’re zooming in on the room that was our home office prior to kids and became the very first room of each kid once they came along.

Back when it was our home office, it was made up entirely of hand-me-downs except for the duvet (a $7 TJ Maxx clearance find) and maybe some of the diy-ed pillows.  I put in under $100 to get it to girly status for the girls and then maybe another $50 to de-girlify it for Sebastian.  Those numbers would be a lot higher if it weren’t for the numerous hand-me-downs and thrift store finds that fill the room.
 

So basically, over the past three years and from left to right, there’s a $150 difference.  I used a lot of stuff I had on hand, like the paint for the wall stripes, to get it from start to currently, but even if I had to buy the on-hand stuff initially, it would still be under $200.  I know it’s not something that you’d see in a home magazine but I love that it’s cute and I didn’t have to spend an arm and leg to get it that way.  :)

DIY Cardstock Mat

My grandparents drove in for a little visit last month and with them, they brought a plastic bag filled with stuff of my dad’s from high school.  (In case you’re new here, my dad passed away when I was in college, so as you can imagine, having his stuff means so much to me.)  Among the random things was a big stack of photos.  They all seemed to be from the same road trip out west and some of them were really cool pictures.  I picked out four of my favorites and hung them in Sebastian’s room last week.
  
Because they were a tad smaller than the normal 4 x 6s of today and therefore didn’t quite fill the space behind the mats already in the frames I put them in, I whipped up some new mats for them out of cardstock I picked up at Hobby Lobby (only 54 cents each!).

See?  Not quite wide enough.

They now not only fit just perfectly with the new mats, but they add a bright punch of color to Seb’s room too.

So…

To make them, I gathered a few supplies – a ruler, an x-acto knife*, a pencil, and the cardstock and frames.  (If you don’t have an x-acto knife laying around, I’d totally recommend getting one!  They’re so handy!)

First, I laid the existing mat onto one corner end of the cardstock and lightly traced around the outside and inside.  (Note:  Since I needed the mat opening to be a little smaller width-wise, I just made it that way by drawing a new line farther in from the existing line on each side.)

 
Also, by placing the old mat on the corner end of the cardstock, I could make sure it was properly lined up and straight and it eliminated the need to cut those two sides.

So next, I grabbed my x-acto knife, placed the ruler along each pencil line, and cut away.  Of course, if you don’t have an x-acto knife, a scissors would work great too!  :)

Using the ruler as a guide to glide the knife along helped me to get nice straight edges.
Last, I placed the new mats right on top of (or under if you’re looking at the back of the frame) the old in the frames and hung them.  By using the old mats and placing them into the frame upside-down (with the beveled edge touching the actual photo and the flat edge against the new mat), it gave each frame a sort of mini-shadow box look.

 

[Too hot for shirts in Arizona apparently.]


[That’s my old (young) man on the left…all chill-like in Utah.]
 

 

Hopefully someday I’ll find out the sure-to-be great stories from this trip.  Until then, I’ll let Sebastian make up his own.  ;)

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*affiliate link to an x-acto knife very similar to the one I purchased