It's February

I've spent the entire week working, not for pay of course. First I finished my little faux leather top cabinet, then I helped a friend set up a bookkeeping system and I hired a real estate company to sell my house. Boo Hoo, I've been dreading this because this means I have to clean the loft up and put up my toys. I have decided I have to live here though so whatever I'm doing at the time will be out, the rest will be put away (someplace). If I didn't live in the humid South, I'd put things in the garage but since I can't do that there's no option other than packing the boxes and here they sit!!! Oh well, its time to get on with it.

Remember, its February which means its Mystery Pattern month. Do send me pictures if you solve the Mystery. I'll post them, along with mine, here soon.

What I do in my spare time

I've been painting between building a web page and knitting. Here's what happened. My DH had a file cabinet under his computer table that he set his coffee cup on as he read his email. I confess, I did the same. The cabinet was made out of that fake wood stuff -- you know, bits of sawdust glued together and called wood? It had a strip of glued on fake wood covering it. Well, after a million cups of coffee the top was looking horrible so I decided to paint it. I also have a cedar chest that I got when I graduated from High School a million years ago and it also is pretty beat up. I stuck the 2 back in the spare room and put plants on them for the winter but suddenly I had a brilliant idea. Why not try one of those faux paint projects on them? Back in the memory bank was a faux leather look from TLC's Trading Spaces. OK, you know what happened!!! I looked up the faux leather look on DIYTV's web page, bought the stuff and started in. I highly suggest if you try this, you do the faux work first, I did the flat black paint first and had to go back over it when it was finished because drips from the faux work hit the flat black putting glueish drips on flat black paint that washing didn't help.

I started with brown wrapping paper and tore it into little pieces. I laid them in a paper plate full of Decoupage Finish and plastered the little bits all over the top. After that dried overnight I painted the glued and sealed stuff with brown paint (called Leather Brown and it was way too light). I didn't like the look so then I painted again with a darker brown that I had mixed at the local Ace Hardware. This time I took a rag and patted the paint on with that. Then I took a picture. I've found photos help you find the flaws. After looking at the picture I did some more paperwork and more paint. Finally!!! I was ready to put on a few light coats of clear satin polyurethane. When done I let it sit a few days and then put on another coat of flat black on the base and after looking at my picture I see I need to take the drawers out and paint the insides of the cabinet but that's OK, I bought more flat black to do my cedar chest.

What I'll do on the cedar chest though is use tissue paper for the faux leather rather than brown wrapping paper. It looks ok on the cabinet but that wasn't what I really had in mind, I wanted more of a flat finish on it rather than the sort of bumpy finish I got with the brown paper. Still, my DH would have loved his newly finished cabinet and I like it too. Its going with me when I move instead of to the dump as I originally planned.

Oh yes, plant is back on it because that room has windows on 2 sides and that's where I keep my plants in the winter, they have to be up where they'll get as much daylight as possible. This particular plant is sick but if it survives the winter it will look better when it gets back out on the back porch where it's humid and hot in the summer. I only wonder what will happen if I take it North when I move. Poor thing!