After the Harvest

Driving down the road the other day with my mother, we saw lots of cotton on the sides of the road where it had blown off the cotton trucks on the way to the gin. Mom remembered a drive with dad along the same road, which was near the area where dad grew up - son of a cotton farmer. She said there was cotton blown to the sides of the road then too and she remarked to dad that if his dad had been alive to see that, he would have ordered them all out of the car to pick up that wasted cotton. lol

I wonder what grandad would have thought of this cotton that was missed by the cotton stripper.

DIY Silver Lamps

It's been awhile, hasn't it? I have been so busy getting bids and looking at building materials, that I haven't been getting online except to look up something. I've been quilting, but it's hand quilting and nothing new to show. So instead, I'm posting pictures of some lamps that needed a facelift before we listed our house for sale.

I bought these lamps at Target.com a few years ago. They were supposed to be white, but when I got them, they were more like bisque or off-white. And being made of resin, they looked pretty cheap. I bought a can of Krylon Sterling Silver Metallic and sprayed one coat on a lamp, and then used a black antiquing gel (sorry, I don't remember the brand on it) to age it.

It wasn't the rich silver of real metal, so I gave it another coat. Much better.

I wanted to protect the paint, so bought a can of clear satin sealer. On the can, it said a clear sealer will dull the finish a little. Well. It did more than dull it. It darkened the finish also, which wasn't the look I was going for at all. (on the right)  It made a great pewter finish though, so if I ever want a pewter, I know how to get it now.

So I sprayed it again (two coats) and got it back to the deep silver look, and then sprayed the second lamp and antiqued it.  FYI, the antiquing gel said to paint it on and rub off where you don't want it.  That didn't work at all.  Maybe if the paint had cured better - or maybe it still would have smeared everywhere.  Or maybe the instructions on the gel were not for a painted object.  In any case, the way that finally worked for me was to use a very fine artist's paintbrush and paint it on in the crevices.  Then, I let it dry a minute and wiped off the excess with a damp cloth, being careful not to wipe hard or in the areas I really wanted dark.

It took very little paint to do all this, and I had well over half a can left. But I never got to use it on anything else. Since we decided to put everything in storage, we had to get rid of all our paint and everything flammable. I hated getting rid of my collection of paint, especially that one.