Apothecary Dome Creation and First Lovely Beasts Giveaway!

Welcome new and existing readers of Lovely Beasts! I hope you all will enter my first ever giveaway today because if you don't, I'll think you don't like me or my stuff :).

I've been buzzing inside for the last few days out of excitement about putting this together! I wanted to have a giveaway the minute I started the Lovely Beasts blog, but told myself I had to reach the goal of 100 followers first. So I'm realllly close (only 3 away) but I've made an executive decision to host the giveaway anyway! It's not really cheating when you're being generous right?!

I'll talk more about making my tiny little apothecary dome, but first a wonderful picture of what you will win if you enter the Lovely Beasts Giveaway! And by the way, this has been my favorite photo shoot/staging yet. Hope you like the pictures because they were so much fun to take!

If you enter you will win my little apothecary dome, 3 beautiful vintage hardware knobs, and 10 pages from a Comparative Anatomy lab manual from the 60's (including 2 pages with animal anatomy drawings).

Wouldn't it be great to win all of this stuff?! Decorate your little refurbished table with the glass dome, update your vintage drawers with the knobs, or mod podge your ornaments or glass with the lab worksheets! Yes! It would be! I know it and you know it. So please enter! The rules are at the bottom of this post.

Before you see more pictures, I'll show you how I created the apothecary dome. Some of you may remember that I bought an antique New Zealand newspaper from 1895. Well it was falling apart and in pieces, so I used one of the portions that fell away for the bottom of the dome. It's an amazing advertisement for Crawford's Pills (I believe to help stomach pain). I mod podged it to the bottom of the dome putting the glue on both the glass and the newspaper. Here's what it looked like before the glue dried.

Once the glue dried, I "shaved" off the excess paper around the edges of the glass with an emery board. Thanks to Gloria from Potentially Beautiful for that life-saving tip! It worked much better than the exacto knife  and reduced the possibility of stabbing or cutting myself. Here's the bottom "unshaven."

Even the bottom of the dome is beautiful to me! Next I took remnants from the newspaper that had fallen away or were cut off from my previous dresser redo, and mod podged them to the outer rim of the plate. I always save paper and fabric remnants from projects because I know I can always use them later! I hate to waste and love to reuse.

After using the emery board and exacto knife to clean up the edges, I mod podged the outside of the newspaper to protect the surface, it looks...awesome!

It's almost like a lens. If you look at the plate of the dome from different angles, you will be able to read more of the ad. After carefully cleaning the glass with some windex, I took the same picture under natural sunlight. You're able to see the color and age of the newspaper much better here.

Why can't advertisements look like this anymore? And yes it's hard to give this lovely dome away, but it makes me happy to think someone else will enjoy it! This is all yours if you enter the giveaway!

Here's a few close-ups of the pages:

And if you're wondering what the whole manual looks like:

The knobs have a wonderful patina and will go great as decorations, hooks, or drawer pulls. And the anatomy book is a bit creepy, but the pages are really fun to frame. I've actually used some to create unique cards and envelopes. There are a lot of worksheets/quizzes in there, but I'll make sure to give the winner 2 pages with anatomy drawings (just like the one of the shark above). A total of 10 pages in all!

So you want to win all of this right? This giveaway is open until July 4th. Everyone has 2 chances to win by doing the following:

• Leave me a comment to enter and let me know what you like about the giveaway
• Follow me! And leave me a comment that you are doing so. If you're new, PLEASE PLEASE follow me! I would love to have more excuses to have giveaways. And I want  to follow you back so leave me your link as well! 

Good luck to all!

loving,

emily

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Cottage Headboard Reveal

I know I know, I've been such a tease about my headboard. So without further ado, here she is! A full or queen size headboard perfect for a cottage or beach house!

I've already shown you hundreds of times, but she started out like this.

Pretty, but there were discolorations in the stain and pock marks all over the place. I thought about refinishing the wood, but I realized that the work involved wouldn't justify the overall cost and worth of the headboard. And in my opinion, this style won't sell well unless it's given a new look. 

So after filling the pits in the wood with Minwax wood putty, I lightly sanded the headboard all over. Here were the ingredients used to get the below look:

• 2 coats of cheap white Wal-mart paint (ColorPlace brand) all over
• 2 coats of my free Sherwin Williams Uncertain Grey sample paint on the details
• 2 coats of Behr Creamy White on the rest
• 1 test coat of Minwax Dark Walnut stain on the middle section

Argh! Barf! The glaze came out horrible. I tried rubbing off as much as I could, but it was still much too brown and way too streaky. I was not happy. Here's a close-up of what anger looks like.

Back to the white paint again! I painted 1 coat of the Creamy White over the glaze and hoped that it would be enough to cover it up. It wasn't, but it actually worked out in my favor. The glaze was now just right! 

I added a good amount of water to my Dark Walnut stain to achieve a similar look on the rest of the headboard, and ended up with happy results. The glaze is darker on the grey details because I wanted it to complement the patina on the circular brass details on the side.

And finally finally, she is done.

 

 

I think she'll look so lovely in a room full of white and grey. So glad she's done!

And I keep talking it up, but I've got an awesome 100 Followers giveaway I'm working on for Thursday! I haven't reached the number yet, but I don't really care anymore. Hopefully some of you will follow me once the giveaway is available!

UPDATE: For those of you who are dropping by from a party, the giveaway is officially open! I would love if you entered here! 

Emily

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