Adding Colour

 

S l o w l y but surely, I've been adding colour to our home. Granted, we did paint our walls this beautiful blue/green/grey colour in our living room (I can't for the life of me remember the name) but other than that, things were pretty neutral. Grey rug. Beige couches. Black coffee table. Nothing special. Colour has been showing itself (besides the walls in the living room) by accessories: art, pillows, mirrors, flowers, and books.

Take this mirror for example. A couple weeks ago, my youngest sister and I went thrift shopping and I found this little beauty for $5. 

I knew that I wanted it yellow as soon as I saw it. Instead of spray painting it, I grabbed a bottle of acrylic yellow paint, a foam brush and got to it. If I knew how difficult it was going to be painting all the millions of nooks and crannies with a foam brush, I would have gone out and bought a can of spray paint, but I didn't. *Sigh* It took way longer than I was expecting to paint it, but once it was finished, and hung on the wall, it was all worth it. 

As you can see, I still have the black coffee table, beige couches and grey carpet, but there is a lot more colour going on. The red bench, the yellow mirror, the banner over the fireplace, the pillows on the couch, and the globe on the bookcase. Oh, and let's not forget the bright yellow exersaucer behind the couch. :) 

Here's a side-by-side from when we just moved in, to how it is right now:

How do you add colour in your home? 

Mirror to Chalkboard

One of the important parts of this year's Christmas mantle, is the chalkboard with a wreath hanging in front of it. I love that I can change the word each week, write a Christmas lyric, or write a favourite Christmas poem.

This chalkboard was an easy DIY project that I did one afternoon. When we renovated our bathroom, we took down the generic mirror and in it's place went an oval mirror that I found at Winners. 

That left a plain mirror leaning on one of the walls in the hallway. It never found it's way downstairs to the basement (funny how that happens), so I decided to give it a coat of chalkboard paint and turn it into something useful!

I knew I wanted the edges of the mirror to still be seen, so after taping off the edges with a good quality painter's tape, I gave the mirror a first coat of chalkboard paint with a foam roller. 

There are no pictures of me rolling chalkboard paint, but if you have ever painted, you know what it looks like. Nothing too special. 

The paint went on pretty thick, but I still gave it one more coat for good measure. 

After letting it dry in a closed room for three days, it was ready to be 'conditioned'; i.e. rub chalk all over it and then cleaned off. 

Then came the fun part of writing on it! I wrote one of my favourite lines from a Christmas album that I am loving right now.

 

I love that the edges of the mirror still can be seen. It adds a little sparkle to the large black rectangle on the wall. 

Besides the chalkboard paint, which I found was the cheapest at Canadian Tire, this project was free. My kind of project. 

Have you jumped on the chalkboard train?