Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Stamping Spoons - Update

I've had quite a few comments on how to stamp these spoons.  I have already dabbled in stamped washers so stamping spoons wasn't a far stretch.

You can find good instructions here at Shrimp Salad Circus.

When I tried stamping for the first time I found several really good sites and videos.  Try A Little Tipsy or Every Crafty Endeavor.  There are also some really good videos on Youtube (can't find my favourite one right now).

I ordered my stamp set from 2BCreative on Etsy because I couldn't find them locally. I just checked and she is still selling them.

If DIY isn't your thing, Etsy is full of these.  Typing "stamped spoon" into the handmade search yielded 7 pages and "spoon garden marker" yielded 8 pages.

Have fun. I plan to buy my mom a parsley plant and stamp her out a matching marker. I may just have to make a couple for myself too.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Stamped Spoon for Mother's Day

Edited to link up to Donna at Funky Junk Interiors' Saturday Nite Special Linky Party.

Funky Junk's Saturday Nite Special





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I know these stamped spoons are all over blogland so I won't bother going into detail about how I made mine. Yes, these are two of my Goodwill spoons, so I'll stop whining that they didn't have anything good because I did pick up these fabulous specimens.


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Here are a few tips I learned while doing this:

Smash the heck out of that spoon to get it flat ... it can take it, just don't hit the handle. I found I had to keep switching sides until it was completely flat. This is a good project for letting out some frustration.

Don't put your letters down backwards (note the D in grandma - I "fixed" it and we'll just call it a design feature).

The best tip though - after you use your Sharpie to fill in the stamped letters use a Mr. Clean magic eraser to remove the excess. Works better than anything else I've tried.


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(why yes, that is me reflected in the unstamped spoon...)

From start to finish this took me less than a half hour, including locating the missing letter E from the stamp set (it fell into a box in the garage during the kitchen reno). I just have to make another one for my mom (don't know why but I assume this one's for my mother in law).

Love an instant gratification project.

Now to figure out how to get the pictures in to this post without using Flickr since too many family members look at my account (they don't read my blog!).

update: my apologies if these pictures are huge.  I had to use an old Photobucket account and even though I resized them, they still seem to be appearing in gigantic size and I don't feel like fiddling around with it any more since I'll probably never use Photobucket again.  We'll pretend I just like to show lots of detail.


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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Not Feeling the Thrift Store Love

thrift store cutlery


I love decorating with vintage things.  Vintage, retro, antique, whatever you call it I like the style. I have been drawn to many of the blogs that I follow because they use this style - urban farmhouse, country (I don't like that word, reminds me of decorating with ducks), cottage, beachy - love it. And I've learned from my blog reading that the best way to do vintage is through thrift stores.  Makes sense.  Up until now I've been a fleamarket/ebay/etsy shopper.  But I wanted to try some stamping on spoons for Mother's Day so I thought it would be faster to check out the local thrift store.

Now, I have been to thrift stores before and I admit, I'm just not a fan.  Can't place my finger on it, but I just have never had any luck.  But yesterday I found myself with a little free time so I headed off to my local Goodwill.

thrift store cutlery


And I have to tell you ... I just don't get the Goodwill love.  This stuff was not exactly cheap and pretty sparse for such a big store.  For example, there was a white bowl, nothing special, wasn't a brand name or anything - $9.99.  Seems a bit steep for a thrift store.  There was very little silverware - 99¢ a piece (is that reasonable?).  I picked up a few spoons and a fork just so I wouldn't leave empty handed (and I'm dying to try the stamping thing).  I don't know ... think that's my last trip to Goodwill.  Maybe it was just a bad day? Maybe I'm being unrealistic about the price points?

There is a second hand shop close by that I've never tried.  Maybe I'll pop in there later today and try them out.  Someone has to sell the junk beautiful items that I love.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Almost Done

I haven't updated on the kitchen reno in quite a while but I am happy to report that we are almost done. All that's left is connecting the hood to the vent then I will make everything look pretty for some After shots. For now, here's a sneak peek.

Almost done