Tutorial - Transforming a Window into a Business Sign

Welcome to my window transformation tutorial.  I will show you how to take an everyday tossed aside window and turn it into something once again useful and functional.

This is the finished sign.  I am a jewelry designer that recreates with vintage elements and was in need of a sign for my business when I do special events.  I will be participating in an upcoming event called AA/JMS here in Minnesota next week, with Sue Whitney, aka Junk Market Style owner.  I did a post about it here.  So when I found this great window at an occasional sale store, I knew I had to have it for this re purposing.

My window in its before state.  Loved the 4 slats of glass and thought words when I saw it.

I took extra foam core from another project and cut it into 4 strips to fit inside of the window panes.

At JoAnns' I found the perfect material for this project.  Kind of an oatmeal color with flecks of neutrals in it for texture, but yet smooth enough to paint on.  Used a 50% off coupon for the fabric and bought extra to also make some jewelry frame boards with the same material.

Tools of choice...paint palette, acryclic black paint, paint brush and stencils of choice.

I taped my stencils together to spell out my words ahead of time with masking tape and than made sure I had them even before starting to paint the letters.  I also taped this word down to the material to keep it in place.

It was time consuming, as I've a tendency towards perfectionism sometimes, but well worth the time and effort.  I didn't have any over runs of paint under letters, etc., which can happen if one rushes a job such as this.

My sign with just two of the sections completed.

Each of these panels fit in tightly, so they just pop in from the back side.  I however chose to carefully tack the individual panels in better with small nails.  I also trimmed off the excess material on the edges of the back panels too, which I do not have a photo showing.

Here's the sign hanging in our home, so that I could take a photo of it.  I am considering making four more panels with French words or something else that I like and use it in our home like that,  in between the special events that I would just normally get to use the busines sign for.  Just a thought!

Here I have the sign up at the AA/JMS event and waiting for the rest of my props and jewelry to get put together too.  I have a sale this Friday and Saturday at our French Flea shop, and than can get set up totally at the AA/JMS event for the May 5-9 sale.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and it maybe gave you some inspiration of what to do with a window you may have laying around the garage or basement.

Here is another window idea I did for our cabin decor with a six pane window.

I'm linking up today with:

Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays at Coastal Charm 

Transformation Thursdays at The Shabby Chic Cottage

DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land

White Wednesdays at Faded Charm Cottage

Its so Creative Mondays at Its So Very Cheri

2nd Time Around 

"April at the French Flea"

Many of you that follow my blog regularly and are aware that I sell my jewelry redesigns in a shop locally here in Minnesota called "the French Flea".  It is an occasional style store, which means we are only open occasionally.  In our case, we are open four (yes 4 days) days a month.  We've chosen the 2nd Thursday - Sunday of each month to consistently be open.  Our shop is a group of creative women that each have our own unique gifts and thus the combined talents of all of these wonderful women makes the shop what it is.  We are a French inspired shop that sells all re purposed, redesigned, repainted, refurbished and unique one-of-a-kind finds.  Thus, I'm going to link this blog post up for the "Thrifty Tuesday" event, since everything in the shop is truly a thrifty find and treasure.  Enjoy the post.

All of these previous photos are of the other vendors items.  They have great furniture, accessories, lighting, etc.  Notice the fabulous newly designed "Flea Bag" on the manequinn, which has recently been created specifially for the "French Flea" shop customers.  So cool!

Mimi-Toria's Designs

 by Gretchen Schaumann

The remaining photos will be of jewelry designs I created using vintage finds and a mix of some new semi-precious gemstones to recreate a fun wearable piece of art.  The furniture pieces are my personal props I use to display my jewelry on for my sale events.  Enjoy!

All hand wire-wrapped, filled with vintage wonderful treasures, freshwater baroque/stick style pearls, mother of pearl elements, vintage crystal, rhinestone rondelles, and faux glass grey vintage pearls.  Lots of hours went into creating this one-of-a-kind treasure necklace.

One side of detail...

The other side...

I love creating this type of a necklace, but time spent on them prohibits me from making them very often.  Each one is unique and truly a one-of-a-kind heirloom quality treasure.

    Fairytales Do Come True...

at least they did for me. :)

Layers of necklaces...

So here you have it.  A store filled with one-of-a-kind treasures!

We're open April 8-11th, in Anoka, MN on the beautiful Mississippi River and Rum Rivers.  Thursdays we have 10-8 pm hours, with "Girls Night Out" citywide in Anoka and special events each month.  This month we are having a vintage fashion show in our shop and free treats and drinks.  Something fun and different each month.  Our hours on Friday and Saturdays are 10-5 pm, and Sundays we're open from 12-4 pm.  I hope to see you sometime at the shop, and please do say "hi".  I'd love to meet you.

To see more of this fun shop I'm privileged to be a vendor in, please check out our French Flea blog here.  I'm linking up to "Thrifty Tuesdays" to share what a group of women have done with their Thrifty finds.  I hope you enjoyed this post, and I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions you might have.  Have a blessed Tuesday!

Gretchen of

Mimi-Torias' Designs

"Trash to Treasure for my Neck" by Mimi-Toria's

Welcome to another "Nifty Thrifty Tuesday" gathering of friends.  I am going to show some recent photos of jewelry I've created with "found elements", thrifted treasures and antique shop scores.  Enjoy!

This piece shown is one of my more intricate and time consuming creations.  These elements were garnered over years of thrifting, scrounging and shopping for various one-of-a-kind treasures that resulted in this design.  The bakelite yellow bird was purchased at an antique shop recently with a mix of other elements for $1.00.  Yes, it was a fabulous find and really pulled it together.  The amber crystal element was found at another antique shop last week, for a very fair price as well.  The vintage paste bracelet and focal paste piece were from yet another antique shop.  

So the moral of my blog post, is that not only can you thrift at "Thrift Stores", but if you get lucky, you can thrift at your local antique shop, occasional sale store, and/or Flea Market as well. 

Thanks for taking the time to view my post today.  I'd love to hear a comment from you if you have the time.

  Gretchen

 

Bed Springs to Spring Vases

I just came across another fun blogging party and will link it to "Transformation Tuesdays", as this was definitley what I call re purposing, and this new blog party calls "transformation".   Thank you Gina at the Shabby Chic Cottage for yet another wonderful blogging party to join.

Thank you Linda from Coastal Charm for hosting this fun new event each Tuesday.  I am starting this blog party with a very thrifty idea that I came up with last Fall.  Let the fun begin.

Example #1 is:  A natural rusty bed spring (sprayed with poly) combined with a re purposed glass as a vase with fresh Spring violets.

Example #2:  Silver spray painted bed spring w/a glass flued vase and fresh cedar.  Think Holidays.

Example #4: is a bed spring with vase that I added vintage pale pink rayon bias tape with vintage crystal to it for Valentine's Day theme at the French Flea shop I sell in and then I had fresh flowers in them.

This is another style of springs you may come across that are cool re purposed with fun little bird nests.

You may be wondering, so how is this post about thriftiness anyways.  It all started with this box spring mattress that we needed to get rid of.  It had been my Grandma's and it needed to be gone...  It would cost us to get it recycled, so I came up with the brilliant idea to recycle it ourselves and use the bed springs in various projects. lol

I enlisted help from my husband, Jon, and we took it out on our back deck last Fall.  We had to remove all of the coverings on it and the batting.  Jon took care of removing the wood surrounding form of the box spring for me.

With the use of heavy duty pliers, a bolt cutter, hammer and other various tools we were able to get the coiled springs loose from the frame.  Using a painters mask, it surely helped keep down the dust mite issues. Quite old, so a smart thing to do.  Good to be safe now, than sorry later on.  This mattress had been incased in a heavy duty plastic cover for years, but its 1960's origins made it very old by now.

Tah dah!  42 springs available for re purposing projects.

Some have been spray  painted black, some have been painted ivory, some were painted platinum, some were painted silver, and yet some have been left with their original metal patina.  A variety for each persons taste.  I've been selling these re purposed projects for $9.00 each at the shop I sell at, and also gave 6 away to my siblings as keepsakes of our Grandma at Christmas time.  I've sold about 25 of them at the shop, so its turned this "Nifty Thrifty" project into a money making project as well as a recycling one. 25 x $9 = $175.00 in sold springs vs. $25 fee to have it hauled away. 

Some have been left rusty.

What is fun, is that with a few little twists here and there, one can easily change the look of this for any season or holiday.  A vintage small skeleton key, a crystal prism, or any little doo dad, just gives it the embellishment that makes it turn from trash to a treasure.  If you liked this idea, than you might like a sight I'm a contributor on called, Junk Market Style.  You can see a whole community of cool projects at this website here.  See you on the Junk pile.

Thanks again, Linda for hosting this fabulous new blogging party.  To see more of Linda's blog as well as her Nifty Thrifty Tuesday Party Participants, check out her site here.

Update:  3/4/2010  I'm so excited to share that Linda, the hostess from Coastal Charm, has shared this post as one of her 4 top favorites to share for a follow-up to her Nifty Thrifty Tuesday blogger party this week.  I got in by the seat of my pants at about 10:30 on Tuesday evening, so many of you may not of even had the chance to see my post.  I guess better late than never, but next time I'll be more timely. I was out of town for the day, and hadn't had time to prepare ahead of the party.  Thanks Linda for this wonderful opportunity!  To see Linda's feature of 4 party participants check it out here.