“Thrift Store SCORE!” of the Week {5/12/11}

This was one RANDOM thrifting haul, folks! We’ve got all sorts of things here, but each will serve a distinct purpose in the DreamGreen household.

As you may know, I was away this past weekend on vacation, so I wasn’t able to do any thrifting. But John and I took care of a couple-week’s-worth of hunting the weekend before (this was when we also picked up last week’s “Thrift Store SCORE!”).

We did plenty of walking that particular Saturday – There weren’t any major plans on our agenda so we took our time leafing through albums and weaving between furniture in the aisles. But one arm load and $22 later, we came away with the pile(s) below (plus four records and a lamp not seen below – The lamp WAS given a second’s worth of fame at the bottom of this post though).

  • Clock: $7
  • Plastic yellow vase: $1
  • Weird plastic-encased succulent candle holders: $1 each (wait till you see some details of these – Just bizarre)
  • Brass candlesticks: $1 each
  • Two hat boxes: $5 each

Now for some details – Here’s the clock:

Oddly enough, you can actually put something inside of the glassed-in clock box and spin it around on its lazy-susan-type base. Not sure why you would want to do that though…I think I’ll either leave it empty or put something SUPER random in it, like fortune cookie fortunes.

Here’s the vase:

Needs a good wipe down…But I loved the shape! I plan on giving it a fresh coat of spray paint so that it gets a brand new identity. Maybe put some tiny paper-adorned branches in it? Like this (great how-to tutorial here, btw):

Then we’ve got the candlesticks to investigate:

The brass ones are pretty standard, so I’m going to fix that with a coat of white spray paint to modernize them and really show off their curves 🙂

But for now, they are dirty, dark and waxy…

And then there are the completely random and weird succulent candle holders:

When I saw these little guys perched on a shelf OVERFLOWING with other candlesticks, I think I actually laughed out loud. There’s something so bizarre (but also completely fetching) about them! I don’t even know if they need candles to be awesome – Right now, they are candle-less on the new oak shelves in the living room (original arrangement of accessories seen at the bottom of this post).

And finally, the hat boxes!

I love storage just like the next Type-A/OCD girl, but PRETTY storage takes the cake. So I hastily grabbed these to use as a wrangler of hand towels in our linen closet. When I opened one of them up to investigate and photograph the interior, I got a little surprise:

An old pair of lady’s leather gloves and two embroidered handkerchiefs were nestled inside the box’s tissue paper! The gloves are TEENY tiny – Too small for my hands, but they might be a sweet little decoration somewhere and same with the hankies.

Gotta love unexpected treasures! (I think this is the closest I’ll ever get to real buried treasure…)

But here are the boxes all full and happy in the linen closet

Oh how I adore functional thrift store scores 🙂

Happy thrifting!

Sidenote: That linen closet is now FULL of linens thanks to the continued task of moving…Stay tuned tomorrow for {Part Two} of the move-in process!

(Photo credit for branches with paper leaves: here)

DIY Framed Word Clouds

Oh how I love word clouds…If you’re a sentimental female like me, I think it must be part of our genetic makeup to be drawn to colorful little clusters of words – Especially the ones that are customizable!

You probably know that you can get plenty of these darling little pieces of art on Etsy stores like this one or this one. But did you also know that you can make them yourself WITHOUT Photoshop experience!!?

I recently discovered Wordle.net and its word-cloud-creation capabilities using any words, colors and arrangement you deem fit for your room/family.

In honor of my best friend’s brand new baby and his one month birthday this week (and his daddy’s birthday is today too!), I decided to create a piece of custom word cloud art for their house – I documented the process so that you can try this out yourself. It’s SUPER easy!

First, click on this link to take you over to the website. Then click “Create” on the toolbar at the top of the page.

After clicking the “Create” tab, click inside the box shown and “Paste in a bunch of text”. This is your chance to make a completely unique word cloud all your own! For the piece I made for Beth, I used these words:

I just thought up as many baby words as I could think of, including his name all in caps so that it would stand out. I didn’t use anything longer then one word because any phrases with multiple words and spaces would be separated and placed randomly throughout the page. I DID include his birth date though (April 13th) by not putting any spaces between the letters and numbers.

After clicking “Go” beneath the text box, I got this:

Beautiful!!! I love the colors, the font, the arrangement of text in random directions – Pretty much perfect. Even his name ended up being on one of the outer edges and right-side-up!

::click:: went my mouse on the “Print” button below the image. (I printed several just in case one of the copies got messed up)

But then I noticed the little button that said “Randomize” next to the print button…I had to click at least a COUPLE of times!

Here are some of the random results I got:

After some fun with the “Randomize” button, I finally decided that the first image I got was the best one for Bethany and their house/nursery. All it took from there was picking up a pretty frame to match the decor of their home and voila!

But you know I couldn’t stop there…I also made one for our house! Here are a couple of the first attempts:

But I finally chose this one as the final piece:

I was able to REALLY customize this one because I noticed the buttons right above the word cloud image: “Font”, “Layout” and “Color”.

This is where you can customize a step further by choosing a font you like best, a layout (ex. all horizontal, all vertical, mostly horizontal, totally random, etc.) and colors that match your space.

After printing a few copies, sticking one into a recently re-purposed frame (originally an ugly black and silver finish, but now a sleek white), we had some free DIYed art for the bedroom!

(Sorry for the grainy picture…I kept forgetting to bring the camera so John had to take it with his Blackberry…)

I promised John I wouldn’t put the framed piece anywhere that guests could giggle over because, I admit, it IS super cheesy. But of course I’m revealing it to everyone in cyberspace which is probably just as bad, if not worse. Sorry, babe!!!

At least I know some girls out there will think it’s as adorable as I do 🙂

Yay for cheesy, sentimental DIYed/free art!!!!!!!!!!!!

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