Everything Old Is New Again

Halfway through stripping

Exposed bare wood under old paint

In my last post I mentioned the radiator enclosure that my husband asked me to strip and paint, conveniently ignoring the fact that I was already in the middle of stripping another piece of furniture and had a bedroom door waiting in line to be stripped also. Anyway, this enclosure had been sitting in my bathroom since before we purchased our home nearly 22 years ago and it had never been painted or retouched in all that time. You can only imagine the sorry state of that thing and in retrospect I'm sorry I didn't photograph it before I started working on it. It was a mess. The paint was peeling and chipping, bare wood was exposed in some places and the definition in the moldings was lost under multiple layers of paint. It was a an ugly mess and the job necessary to rid it of all that paint was another ugly mess. Fortunately I specialize in ugly messes.

Layers and layers of paint

After preliminary paint removal

Here you can see what the frame and it's perforated metal screen looked like after I had spent a day or so removing some of the paint. That's right, I said AFTER. The metal grate had been so painted over that some of the openings were clogged. Stripping it was harder than I thought because as I scraped the stripper off with a spatula, it would ooze through the openings to the other side. Scrape that side, it would ooze back. Not fun. The swan cutout was another challenge. It was backed by two small pieces of perfed metal butted together and boasted so much paint in its recesses that the beak was truncated. I won't even mention the frame corners. These pictures should tell you the whole story.

Almost done stripping

After painting

After stripping and scraping off several layers of old paint and cleaning with steel wool, I gave the frame a quick sanding with a palm sander. I used my Dremel rotary tool with a drum sander head to sand some details back into the swan. I removed the sawdust with a tack cloth and gave it three coats of mildew resistant paint with a built in primer made for high humidity environments. I also used the palm sander on the metal grate with excellent results. It cleaned down to the bare metal. A few quick sprays with Rustoleum Bright Coat silver finish and the grate looked better than new.

Back in the bathroom

One week, a half gallon of paint stripper, untold amounts of steel wool, a bunch of wooden shish kebob skewers (for digging out paint from the crevices) and several sanding pads later, I am proud to say that I reduced that ugly mess of a radiator cover into something that I actually like looking at. In total it took four days to completely strip the frame and grate down to the point where I could even think about refinishing it plus another three days to paint it, allow it to dry very well, then replace the grate and return to the bathroom. It's far from perfect but it sure is a darn sight easier on the eyes than in its former state and it makes my time on the porcelain throne just a little bit more pleasant. I've still go to get back to that small chest of drawers I was working on when my husband tossed this project at me as well as the door to my daughter's room that also needs to be stripped down and repainted.

Never thought I'd be stripping at my age.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

I've been busy...

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It seems as though I was looking forward to summer barbecues just weeks ago and now it's the middle of September. Where has the time gone? I've been so busy this summer that time has flown by and I've barely posted anything on this blog. Where to begin?

My son and daughter each graduated from their respective community colleges this year and are deep in the throes of job hunting. They have a couple of prospects lined up so fingers and toes are crossed. My daughter came back home after graduation so we're all getting adjusted to having a full house again. My husband and I enjoyed a great second honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in August and I was thrilled to return home to find that my children had not let my garden die of thirst in my absence nor had they trashed the house. Obviously they have either been well trained or feared for their lives upon my return. Either way, I liked the results.

As in every summer, I spent a lot of time in my garden but this year it was a mixed bag of results. Some things did very well, others did poorly. I tried my hand at growing some new things this year and was rewarded with some potatoes, one huge zucchini, broccoli, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes that are still coming in, carrots and peppers. I'm torn about planting next year. I'm thinking perhaps I should amend the garden and allow it to rest at least one year. At least it sounds good but I know I will miss the thrill of eating my own vegetables. Maybe I'll limit myself to containers next year so the garden can rest and rejuvenate. Perhaps.

I've also been doing some small home improvements and am still in the midst of them. During my week in Mexico my son painted his bedroom and did a pretty fair job considering he really didn't much experience at it. My daughter has also finally finished painting her room.  I foolishly suggested we try a gradient technique I saw on Pinterest. Silly me. Needless to say it was a lot more difficult than in appeared in the online tutorials. It took two weeks and enough paint to cover the Brooklyn Bridge to paint this tiny little room but I suppose that was due more in part to the fact that neither she nor her boyfriend really know what they were doing and because they spent as much time goofing around with each other as they did slapping paint on the walls.

I started stripping a small chest of drawers that a friend of mine gave me when she bought herself some new furniture. I got as far as taking off the old finish when my husband suggested that as long as I was stripping one thing, I might as well strip something else as well, whereupon he promptly brought me the bathroom radiator enclosure. Oh no! I'll leave the details of this project for another post. Still more stripping, painting and fixing up to be done around here. I haven't had much time to be creative but I'm hoping to take care of that very soon when I get around to refinishing the chest of drawers. I'm looking forward to it.

Oh, I almost forgot. My daughter decided to paint over her radiator to match the gradient wall. It's one of the prettiest parts of the room.
<----Looks pretty good, don'tcha think?

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva  

Bella Luna

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The moon has been a recurring theme for me this summer and  I wanted to share two beautiful moon images I shot in my own backyard...literally. The first is that of the beautiful blue moon that appeared in the sky on August 31 this year. This photograph was shot with my old Canon PowerShot and its awesome zoom lens. As far as I'm concerned it may as well be an official NASA image. I LOVE the details in this picture.

My second "moon" image is one that I had been waiting for all summer. I came across a set of seedlings at my local nursery called Moon Flower Vine during a shopping trip for garden supplies so I picked it up because the picture on the tag looked like a petunia and I love petunias. I planted it around an old tree stump in the garden and trained the vines to wrap around the tree. After months of patiently waiting it finally bloomed...just in time for the blue moon at the end of August. As you can see by the size of my daughter's hand in proportion to the flower, this is no petunia-sized blossom. The creamy white flowers were as large as saucers. They open only at night and last only for one night, closing forever before dawn. The size and color of the blooms gives them the appearance of little moons floating above their leaves. I have been treated to an endless show of pearly white moon blossoms every night since the end of August and I hope it continues for a few weeks more. I'm in no hurry for summer to say farewell.

ADDENDUM 09-16-12:

Last night the new moon occurred. Tonight my moon flowers were in a blooming riot. Take a look at the photo to the right. The vines are wound around the trunk of a dead tree that is about five to five and a half feet tall. That should give you an idea of the scale. These flowers are big.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

The Great Clothespin Makeover and The Potted Plant

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In my last post I mentioned how I squeezed in a teensy bit of time for crafting by decorating some wooden clothespins I'd bought. I like the way they turned out so much I've decided to continue decorating them as well as take them up a little notch. This time I painted them and added some patterned ribbons. Can't wait to see them on my line.

Some time ago I had picked up a load of nail art decals from a fellow Freecycler who needed to get rid of them. I had used them in a crafts project with the senior members of the Dorchester Senior Citizen's Center last year to create tiny refrigerator magnets. They all came out great but I was still left with a big load of nail decals. In a desperate attempt to help use up some of these things, I painted an old, chipped planter pot white and decorated it all around with nail art decals. It didn't come out half bad. Now all I've got to do is stick a plant in it.

UPDATE!! 

My husband has a habit of asking me to give him a young plant for his office whenever he gets a new job. He's been at his current job for a few months but has only now decided to ask for a plant. I decided that I would place a young snake plant in the pot I decorated with paint and decals. I always give him a snake plant because they are so hardy, slow growing and tolerant of many adverse conditions that would kill other plants, particularly that of infrequent watering. He likes the no-fuss nature of the plant. It's a perfect fit for his personality. He also asked for a little sign to keep the sticky fingers in his office at bay so I reached into my RTU (Ready-To-Use) stash and found the blue oval with the white scalloped trim, a leftover from another project. I added text with some press-on letters I had from waaaay back in the day, glued it on to a couple of coffee stirrer sticks and VOILA! -- a cute little sign to keep people at arm's length in a cute and funny way. After all, we don't want to upset the ladies in the office (especially the ones with the sticky fingers).


Ooops, did I just say that out loud?


Ballo ergo sum 
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Just To Pass The Time

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There are those occasions when I seriously can't spare the time to sit down and meander over a project as I am wont to do. Lately those occasions have been coming more frequently and weeks can go by without me ever laying eyes on my crafting table (gasp!). I admit it. I'm a junkie. I'm addicted to creativity in almost any way shape or form and like any real junkie, I've gotta have my 'fix' or I get the shakes. 



My most recent quick and dirty fix came from an unexpected source -- my laundry line. I bought a pack of new wooden clothespins and I could not resist the siren song of those little areas of clean, undecorated wood. Out came the solvent inks, the itty bitty rubber stamps, the permanent markers and  *presto - change-o*, where there was once blank wood now there was color and pattern and lots of cute decorated clothespins. I've always liked hanging my clothes out on a line in warm weather. Now I've got another pretty reason to do so.


NOTE: Solvent inks and permanent markers were used to prevent the colors from bleeding off the pins onto the laundry in the event of rain. A thin layer of clear nail polish or polyurethane further protects the designs from the hazard of a surprise downpour.




Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Shifting Directions

I have three blogs. I started with one and it just grew from there. I dunno...seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, it has become apparent to me that I spend most of my blogging time posting on one of the three blogs, The Creative Diva. The other two, Nature's Conversation,  dedicated to my gardening and Gitana's Corner, which contained musings and anecdotes of my everyday life, have fallen by the wayside. They have become embarrassing reminders that I just can't keep up the pace necessary to maintain all three. So I had a brilliant idea -- why not roll everything into one? After all, life is a creative process so everything I do in my life is creative in one way or another, isn't it? Of course it is! Otherwise how else could I call myself The Creative Diva? So it's settled. As of today I will no longer be posting in three different blogs and compartmentalizing my life. Today I unify all the various aspects of my wonderful, interesting and above all creative life in one blog -- The Creative Diva. This should help me simplify my life, stay on track and provide relevant content in a more timely manner. At least that's the plan.


A big thank you to my readers who have stuck with me through all my ramblings and lapses in posting. I'll try to do better from now on. Stay tuned.

Ballo ergo sum,
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Summer Decorating Begins

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I had promised the director at the Dorchester Senior Citizen Center that I would come back every few months to do the seasonal decorating. I was past due on decorating for summer because the month of June was incredibly busy for me but I finally went to the center to start livening up the space for the hot summer months.

Fortunately I had done a pretty good job of decorating for spring because summer's decorations were added to the already festive look of the room. The walls were already decked out with dozens of butterflies and flowers. To that, I added some kites, colorful flip-flop sandals and two large and very colorful pennants (first photo) that the center director had purchased, all familiar symbols of summer. Coincidentally I had created my own Summertime pennant (second photo) to replace the Spring sign that I had created and hung in the center several months ago. Even though I had no prior knowledge of the pennants the center director had bought, the colors and the motif of my pennant were a perfect match for it and the rest of the room. I couldn't have planned it better. The kites were pinned to several large decorative fabric panels that I had scored for the center last year through a Freecycle donation. You can see some of these panels in the last two photos. In the last photo you can also see those colorful flip-flops strung from a heating pipe, looking for all the world like those sneakers you see hanging from utility lines all over the city. The sandals hang about 8 feet above the floor, low enough for everyone to easily see them but high enough to prevent any of the light-fingered members from making off with them. (Oh yes, those seniors will steal anything that isn't nailed down.) What you don't see in these photos is the Summer Goddess that I showcased in my last post. She was safely on view in a locked glass display case.

I'll go back to the center to finish the summer decorating and then I'll disappear again until September when it will be time to take down all the spring/summer decorations and switch over to fall. On the heels of fall decorating comes winter holiday decorating and that is a huge job. Until then I'll be in my garden, watering and weeding, planting and picking.


Ballo ergo sum
 - Gitana, the Creative Diva

The Goddess of Summer

Life has been charging at me full tilt and I haven't had the opportunity to do much creative playing since I participated in my last OSA Card Layout Challenge so I haven't really had much to post. When I'm not invested in some family-oriented event, I'm in the garden for hours at a time watering, weeding, moving, planting, watering some more. By the time I make it down to my crafts workshop, it's all I can do to check my email and crawl into bed.

If you've been following me for any length of time, you'll know that I left my volunteer teaching position at the Dorchester Senior Citizens Center some months ago but I promised them that I would return to do the seasonal decorating that the members love so much. I had hoped to make it over there in June but the events of my life did not permit it so I'm heading over there later today to start decorating for summer. Yeah, I know, summer's been here for a month but better late than never, I say. I had taken a foam wig head from the senior center with the intention of decorating it for a seasonal display and after months of stops and starts I have finally finished  it.

Close up of flower, butterfly and hummingbird details.

I am pleased to introduce you to The Goddess of Summer. Her grass green hair is fashionably crimped and layered, covered in silky flowers and ornamented with large butterflies and tiny hummingbirds hovering over the blooms. She sports a cascade of leaves down one side of her face accented with a spray of delicate little blooms and wears a matching floral necklace. Glittery arabesque flourishes tattoo both sides of her face and she wears eye shadow with a subtle shimmer. Goddess took quite a bit of work but I am pleased with the way she turned out. She will spend the next few months on display in the showcase at the senior center until I return to decorate for the fall season.

One a slightly different note, I did manage to squeeze in a small project to commemorate my son Alex's graduation in June. His cap and gown were silver and his tassel was black so I created a box that looked like the mortarboard he wore at graduation. On the top I wrote out a message with stick-on letters and on the front of the cap I placed his school initials and class year. For the gift inside the box I folded a series of bills origami style to resemble hearts.This marks the last of my children's graduations for a while and I couldn't be happier.

Okay, enough of this. I've got to get back to my garden.

Ballo ergo sum

- Gitana, the Creative Diva

OSA Layout Challenge Cards

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 In spite of the grueling schedule I have had to keep at work this past week, I managed to eke out  time to craft some cards for the weekly Oriental Stamp Arts challenges. I consider it art therapy to battle work-related stress.

For the card on the left, OSA Challenge #173, our challenge was to create a window card according to the layout provided.  This is a card with an aperture cut out to reveal part of the inner card design. For my card I chose fans and gingko leaves. They are a natural pair inasmuch as they have the same general shape. I stenciled the gingko leaves on the outer card layer using a 6" x 6" template from The Crafter's Workshop. The fans stamped on the inside of the card were colored with Prismacolor art pencils and highlighted with glittery gel pens. The fans were then masked and sponged with ink to create the soft green shading all around them.

For OSA Challenge #174, we were asked to make a card using a printed napkin as part of the decorative elements of the card. I decided to give myself a double challenge by also creating a card in a out-of-the-ordinary format. Because I enjoyed creating the twisted easel card for my daughter's graduation so much, I decided to use that format again. I am very happy with the way this card turned out and apparently the moderator for the OSA weekly challenges liked it enough to make the twisted easel format the subject of OSA Challenge #175.

I chose a circular rice paper napkin with a beautiful blue floral border for my card, spray glued it to a piece of white card stock, cut it into quarters and trimmed close to the edge of the image. A piece of gold-dotted handmade paper was layered onto the top of the card and a quarter of the napkin glued on top of it, trimming it as necessary to create the look as seen in the photo to the left. My biggest challenge was trying to get the flowers on the inside of the card to form a continuous semicircular image. I ended up cutting out and individually placing flowers for optimal results. I managed to use to rosebuds from the image as the stops for the upper 'easel' panel by placing foam squares behind them. The kanji symbol for summer on the upper panel is echoed by its English translation on the lower panel. Strategically placed gold Asian motif stickers, as well as some tiny golden dragonflies, coordinate well with the gold dotted background.

The beautiful butterfly is cut with coordinating Memory Box dies, one for the upper veins and another for the lower body. The body was cut from blue card stock and colored with pigment inks and gel pens. When I first got these dies, I loved them so much I cut and colored a bunch of butterflies just for the love of it so all I had to do was reach into my RTU (ready to use) stash and pick one out for this card.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Staying on the Good Foot

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I've been trying hard to keep up with the weekly Card Layout Challenges sponsored by the Oriental Stamp Arts Yahoo Group I belong to but the demands of my job are leaving me with little time and energy for fun things like crafting. I did  manage to complete challenges #171 (top) and #172 (bottom). As always, my style is simple and clean. With images that represent the Asian cultures I believe this is the best approach. I love the simple elegance of Asian motifs so I tend to keep the elements somewhat spare to allow the natural beauty to be seen.

OSA Challenge #17

Challenge #171 required the use of three squares of different sizes to be placed slightly off center with an embellishment of some sort across the top of the card. As I suspected, most participants in the challenge either used three squares of differently patterned paper or stamped three different images on each square. I chose to keep it simple, using a small yellow-green polka dot pattern paper and sponging a slightly darker shade of green ink around the edges of the three squares before arranging them. Then I stamped one image over the three squares. Of course the image did not stamp cleanly, leaving little gaps where the papers overlapped, so I filled in the gaps with a black marker. The swirled background and bamboo branches along the left edge were all stamped with various shades of green. In spite of the multiple patterns on the paper, the overall composition looks light and airy due to its pale monochomatic scheme.

OSA Challenge #172

For the layout in Challenge #172, I turned it on its side and used it in a portrait orientation instead of the original landscape orientation. Again the use of colors is minimal -- black, creamy white and a vintage beige. The background is a piece of pattern  paper that looks like an old Chinese newspaper. The layout required a panel with a verse or sentiment and an embellishment that was anything BUT paper. I chose narrow satin ribbons in black and creamy white and knotted them together in a simple yet interesting way to really play up the contrast of the ribbons against the background and against each other. The kanji symbols in the text box are actually three small stamps that I placed side by side, held together tightly and stamped them all at the same time. I sponged Distress Ink (color - Old paper) which perfectly matched the look of the background around the edges of the white panel and also around the background panel for a subtle effect. The wispy little branch stamp was embossed with superfine embossing powder to make the color really vibrant and contrast strongly against the patterned background. In spite of the strong contrasts, nothing in this layout is overpowering. Everything seems to be working together in perfect balance and harmony.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva