The Pondering Pony: Branching out: a tutorial

I've recently developed an addiction to Pinterest (I know, I jumped on the bandwagon rather late), and for the first little bit, I wasn't sure if I was doing more than just looking at the great ideas of others but losing my own productivity.

Then I saw her.

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I wasn't happy with how I was dealing with my necklaces. I'll spare you the 'before' shot because a) I forgot to take one and b) it was ugly. You are welcome.

In either case, I decided that this couldn't be all that hard to do, so I spent a few hours wandering antique and second hand shops. I'm sure you could find something at a frame shop, but it seems silly to buy something brand new just to paint it.

By the way- wandering antique shops is a great way to find all sorts of projects and items that you didn't even realize you needed! Mr. Pony doesn't even know how much he appreciates me holding back from buying all the inspirations! But I digress.

Good old J.T. I knew I could count on him.

So I found a frame for all of $8, bought some craft paint {Spicy Mustard- my current color obsession}, and went to work!

Of course, that wasn't the color I wanted. As always, I put a coat of primer on first. This helped cover up the old frame color, and filled in some of the beat up parts so they wouldn't soak in so much of my pretty paint color. {I recommend always having a can of primer on hand. I bought a gallon of the Lowe's cheap stuff for ~$10 and have so far used it on this and this and this. Well worth it!} Then I followed up with 2 coats of my mustard paint. Yay!

I liked how my inspiration used branches, but I didn't want to have to deal with actual branches {shedding bark and bugs all over the place}, so I pulled out a pencil and some 1/4" plywood and sketched out some branches. I cut those puppies out with my handy dandy jigsaw, then sanded them down a bit.

Definitely do a dry run of the branches before you paint anything- I ended up playing around with mine to make sure I had them fitting in the frame like I wanted. It took some playing with, but not much time.

For the branches I used a pearly white craft paint that I had left over from my owl project. Once everything was dry, I used wood glue to put the branches in place and clamped everything down. I just left it overnight, but check how long the glue you use asks for.

My next step was going to be screwing dozens of little eye hooks into the branches to hang necklaces on, but I liked Mr. Pony's idea of just hanging the necklaces around the branches. Not only was it WAY faster, but it would give a prettier finished result!

Of course, right when I thought I was done, Mr. Pony said "How are you hanging it?". DOH! I didn't want to put it up as a normal frame since I'd need to be able to reach the back of the branches to hang stuff. I ended up cutting for 3/4"x3/4"x1" wood blocks, painting them yellow and gluing them to the back with wood glue. Add a couple of hooks to the top two blocks, some wire, and you are set!