Re-purposed Vintage Iron

Last year on a visit to my hometown, I found this iron at a garage sale. It is very heavy and still had the original electrical cord ... but the cord was pretty disgusting and couldn't be saved! Can't help but think that when this would have been new, it would have been considered a great improvement over one made of cast iron that needed to be heated on the stove!

The pattern I chose is from an older Dorothy Dent book and I did play with the colors a bit and added a touch of folk art to give it a bit more "charm". Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed painting it!

Cardinal on a Silver Charger Plate

After Christmas, I totally "scored" a huge stack of charger plates for next to nothing! Now if you know me at all, I have always said, "I do NOT paint on PLASTIC!"... Well, maybe I have changed my mind and besides the back says they are Lacquer Ware, now that sounds much better than plastic, right???

I actually had to ask my fellow painters on Tole Painters Unite, how to prep the surface. You see what scares me about plastic is that I am afraid of the paint not staying on. Those gals over at TPU never let you down, they gave me tons of ideas on how to do it, but I really loved the antique looking silver of the plate; so I simply used DecoArt Multi-Purpose Sealer to prep the surface...and it worked out great!

When I was setting up my craft room, I was sorting through some of my magazines and came across this lovely pattern by Sherry C. Nelson and I just knew I had to paint this cardinal! The pattern came from The Decorative Painter magazine (Issue #4~1991...Yikes!!!) so here's proof that good design never goes out of style!

Vintage Tea Kettle

 I found this little treasure in my parents' shed.

I bet when my mom sees it now she'll be wanting it back! It sure would look nice sitting on top of an old wood stove.

 

 

 

 It started out being two patterns from Dorothy Dent's "Windows to our Country" but it ended up taking on a life of it's own.

 

Because the inside was just plain "icky" (I really don't want anyone to drink from it!) I super-glued the top lid and painted a cute little vine with berries, to top it all off.