MIA- Portugal Ponderings

Happy Monday!  Today Lindsey from Portugal Ponderings is visiting and sharing a super creative craft with you.  I think you’re going to love it :-)

Hi all “Life with the Hawleys” readers, I am so excited to be guest blogging here today.  I have a really simple project for you. First let me ask, do you have any unwanted décor items in your house? Or maybe, you have some household items that were “gifts”, and they don’t fit your taste or home’s color scheme? I know that I have an abundance of such gifts (mostly from my in-laws). I know they mean well, but they send me items that I don’t exactly like.  This figurine, for instance, was a gift from them. Although I was a dancer with a professional ballet school for years, this was not my style. I had made the very bad mistake of mentioning to them that I was looking for a bronze-style ballet statue for a nook in my home. This resin figure arrived weeks later.

Here are some of the problems it has: 1) it is WAY too small (it needs about 1-2 more feet in height to fit nicely in my nook), 2) it isn’t bronze-colored, it is actually painted with weird colors (for example, her hair is gold), and 3) it is a figurine not a statue.  Now, I would have just chucked the poor little figurine (or donated her to Goodwill) if she had bad turn-out (ballet term). I cannot tolerate ballet statues where the feet and leg positions are not aligned in a way that indicates proper technique.  Let me give you an example, here is a ballet dancer with great feet, and here is a statue with AWFUL technique. Basically her legs are not turned out. I could never have this statue in my house. The great thing about my resin figurine is that, as you can see, she is just putting on her pointe shoes. Therefore, I don’t have to worry about her feet looking perfect (yes I know... I am neurotic about this stuff).

Anyway, I decided to paint her. I figured if it didn’t turn out well… then nothing was really lost, other than my time and a can of spray paint.   I took her out to my garage, and put her on a Whole Foods bag, to protect my garage floor. I bought two different items at Home Depot: a can of white spray primer (good on plastic, metal etc), and then a can of spray paint+primer in satin white. I know it sounds like overkill to use a primer and a paint+primer. However, I have used the paint+primer before and I wasn’t impressed with its “sticking” ability.

First, I coated her with one light coat of the white primer. Although, you are supposed to use two coats of the primer, I opted for only one coat since I was going to be painting with the paint+primer.

She is starting to look better already!!

I let her dry for an hour, and then went back to paint (maybe I should have waited longer, but I was impatient). Then I painted, and painted, and painted….

Every hour, I painted another coat. It took a long time because she had so many intricate details. There were definitely moments where I didn’t follow the 12-14 inches rule for spray painting. For example, there was this area under her leg, where the paint was not reaching, even after I turned her upside down and on her side!!  So, I just stuck the spray paint nozzle there and sprayed… Luckily it didn’t glob up on me and start dripping *whew*. After all of the spraying, this was my final result.

Of course I could be neurotic and go back with a small paint brush to get any small areas that may have been missed, but I think it looks pretty darn good. My uncle was actually over at my house for dinner when I brought it in from the garage (after it had dried for 24 hours) and he definitely thought it was ceramic/porcelain. So, I think it was a success! The statute now fits better with my house decor. It has no ugly colors, or gold hair. It also doesn’t look like it is made of resin. I am very happy with the turn out.

So, there you have it. Do you have any items in your home that could use a color change? Did you receive a figurine that was just not the right color scheme? Grab some spray paint and transform it!

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Thank you Lindsey for sharing this creative transformation with us!!