Sunday, May 22, 2011

MOTW and more dollhouse updates! =D


My poor nails looked like crap, but I've been so busy I hadn't had a chance to take care of them. After dinner, Hubby and I watched a movie with the kiddos so it was the perfect time to give my tips a fresh look. And fresh was exactly what I went for! Bright crisp green with some great sparkle and shimmer. I used LIME Alright by Piggy Polish as my base coat. I bought this one on clearance at Ulta a few months back and I don't see it on the Piggy Polish website. BUT...any creme lime green will work. LIME Alright is actually a matte polish and was a bear to apply. I have 3 coats on and honestly it's a little streaky. I am not sure if it's just this color or if all mattes apply like this. But it being matte is kind of a moot point since I added a top coat. Actually first I used a single coat of Sally Hansens Nail Prisms in South Sea Pearl to all nails but my ring fingers. On them I added a layer of Sinful Colors Call You Later. South Sea Pearl is a wonderful sheer polish with a blue/green shimmer and Call You Later has fine gold and green glitters as well as small green round glitters. I tested CYL and was able to achieve near opacity with 4 coats all by itself if you wanted. The Sinful Colors line is available at Walgreens for just $1.99!!! =D


On the dollhouse front I am nearer to completion! I finished laying the flooring for the 2nd story. This is the bathroom and secondary living room or rec room. Hubby and I found an awesome green 'tile' looking material for the bathroom floor. I ended up laying it twice as I realized quickly that the wood grain showed through the fabric after decoupaging the fabric down, so I yanked it up, layed down some gift wrap (white side up) and then reglue the fabric down. I used Mod Podge to both glue it down and to seal it. I put 3 coats on top. It looks amazing! The other room has a green dark sage green diamond patterened 'carpet'! The 3rd floor has also been done. These are the bedrooms and are stained in a pinkish stain on one side and a purplish one on the other. That layer also got a coat or varnish to seal it and make it shine! The 1st floor is drying now. We found a black and white checkerboard vinyl for the kitchen and the main living room will get the same 'carpet' as the 2nd floor! Tomorrow I will get the walls painted and then we can hopefully start assembly tomorrow evening!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

More dollhouse goodies!


Well I'm still wearing the same nail polish from the other day. Been too busy on the furniture to bother with changing it. lol Yesterday I finshed the armoire for the 2nd bedroom, the nightstands for the 1st bdrm,
the sink (which OMG is awesome!!!!)
and built the coffee table.
I just got the first coat of 'ceiling' paint onto 2 of the 3 shelfs. The 3rd one is waiting for the wood putty to cure. Somehow we managed to grab a crappy board that had split, but thankfully my awesome husband was able to figure out how to salvage it and make it near perfect! (Luv that man! =D)

I've also got the 2nd pair of nightstands waiting for glue to dry before assembly, and the lamps are getting painted silver to match all of the hardware. Tomorrow 9after we help a friend move into her house) I've got to run out to Hobby Lobby and return the dollhouse tile and carpet I bought. The sheets I bought are going to be to small for the rooms and rather than spend $7 a sheet, I'm going to but scrapbooking papers and decoupage them onto the floors. For the rooms getting carpeting I'm going to pick up some velvet yardage and use that instead! So instead of spending almost $60 on flooring, I should be able to get it all for around $20 or less. =D

Sunday, May 15, 2011

MOTW and dollhouse update




Friday night I had to take my oldest out to get something nice to wear. His girlfriends' parents were renewing their vows on Saturday so off we went. I found him a whole outfit for $30 (pants, shirt, socks and shoes!!!!) Of course this was after I used the $35 of customer rewards cash I had, but hey it was free money! While there I of course had to check out the cosmetics department. I have decided that I am really going to try to keep any nailpolish purchases to under $3 a bottle. I have a hard time justifying spending more than that on a bottle of polish. My find Friday night was Wet n Wilds' Gray's Anatomy. In the bottle this color is a gorgeous oilslick/peacock gray. (I would like to say that I am a sucker for peacocks!!!) Actually on the nail this one was a bit of a let down. :-( First of all it's really sheer. I have 3 coats on my nails and there is still a good bit of VNL. (visible nail line) That's not that big of a deal as the polish is very thin, and dries fast so adding a couple more layers wouldn't have been to bad. I think in the future I will use this as a layering polish over different dark colors. It does have an awesome shimmer to it and as you can hopefully see in the pics it looks like anything from a dark silver almost pewter color to purple or green depending on the light. While I'm not totally in love with it, for less than $2, I'm glad I bought it!

On the dollhouse front I have finished several pieces: the kitchen island is so far my favorite piece. I have also completed the fridge, claw-foot tub, commode, 2 bedroom chairs, and the vanity. You can find pics of them on my Flickr page here. Currently in process are the wardrobe (which just needs the trim done),a pair of ottomans, the bathroom sink which still needs painted and assembled, the 2 poster beds which need painted and linens made, and the 2nd loveseat.

There will be other pieces as well but to be honest at the moment I'm still not sure what those will be....oooooh yeah the dining room! lol I will be working on this for the rest of the week rather diligently so expect to see updates all week long!

Friday, May 13, 2011

Eeeep! Way behind! (long winded! lol)

Ugh, I'm rather behind on just about everything...this week has been an emotional roller coaster. It started Monday as I was settling in to really kick tush on finishing up the dollhouse. Middle of the afternoon I get a call frmo my sister asking me to come take her to the ER. Her blood pressure wa sky high and her OB nurse (she's 29 weeks) told her she needed to come straight in. So I spent about 6 hours at the hospital with her, long story short she was admitted for what was supposed to be 48 hours of bed rest. Well with great joy (and loads of panic, stress, fear and prayers) Sophia Jo was delivered via c-section yesterday at 12:37pm. She was one day shy of 30 weeks and weighed 2lbs 5oz, and was 15 1/4 inches long. Amazingly my gorgeous niece is currently only on oxygen! Both mother and baby girl are doing wonderfully. My sister will get to come home Sunday or Monday. Sophia will spend the next few months in the NICU, but she's a strong feisty little gal! =D
Needless to say I spent 2/3rds of the past week at the hospital with my sister. I am blessed to have wonderful caring friends who sent prayers, thoughts and well wishes for the pair. The owner of the dollhouse happens to be one such person and she told me to not worry about the house and concentrate on my sister. Now that the initial 'drama' has past I am back to work full tilt. In the hours while I was at home and couldn't sleep I have managed to paint the kitchen island, fridge, claw-footed tub, and toilet. I also finished painting the vanity and reupholstered and painted the 2nd bedroom chair. I ended up buying a wardrobe for the more tomboy-ish twin and that is nearly finished as well. It rained like crazy here this afternoon, but hopefully I'll get some sun tomorrow so I can take pictures of the finished pieces. (if not you'll just have to make do with my chaotic messy desk as a backdrop. lol)

On the nail front I purchased a set of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms polishes off ebay. It's a set of 12 polishes for $45 including shipping which works out to $3 a bottle, which to me is a great deal. I was under the impression that this line was all holographic. Well sadly it's not, it seems that half the line is what are called duo-chromes. (This means 2 toned basically. It's one color when you look at it from one direction and another color when viewed from a different direction) So it was a bit of a let down, but they are all still gorgeous colors. My current mani is the Blush Diamond which is a holo. It's a rich deep pink with a fabulous holographic shimmer when viewed in the sunlight.

I have loads more to update, but I've droned on long enough. Thanks for reading along and I'll be back tomorrow! =D

Friday, May 6, 2011

MOTW (fail!!!) and A new House!

I decided yesterday that I had had naked nails long enough, so I asked my oldest son to grab me a polish out of my boxes. (after explaining that I wanted a COLOR not a clear...lol) he brought me CoverGirls' Iceberry. I got this color in a lot of polishes I bought on ebay, so to be honest I have no idea when this came out but I'm pretty sure it's not a current color. :-( On one hand I honestly don't think that's a bad thing. Sadly this polish was not a good color on me, not to mention I've got 5 (yes FIVE) coats on each nail and this is still ridiculously sheer! VNL (which means Visible Nail Line) is something that most nail bloggers consider a bad thing. This means that you can still see through the nail that over hangs your finger tips. After 5 coats the VNL on this is glaring! So for me this color is a no go. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I might keep it for layering over other colors, or I might decide to mix my own custom color with it, or heck I might give it away.

Ok onto the new house, nope I'm not talking dollhouse, or barbie house, or honestly even brick & mortar houses...but houses on wheels! My husband and I bought a travel trailer today!!!! We've been talking about this for several years, and finally found an amazing deal on a brand new Heartland North Country travel trailer. While this floor plan isn't exactly what are is it's 95% right. I'll be taking loads of pictures over the weekend! We are going to spend Mother's Day weekend camping and I'm in the process of trying to find a campground where we can camp locally over the summer and on into the fall as well.

Well I'm off for now, but I'll be back on Monday with loads of pictures! To all the moms out there...Happy Mother's Day!!!

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Loveseat is done!!!


Yippee, my back is finally feeling good enough to sit at my desk for several hours without more than some discomfort. (several days ago, more than 10 minutes in my chair would send me to my bed to lay down. :-( ) So I am thrilled to be on the mend! I finally finished the 1st of 2 loveseats for the barbie house. While I am very happy with how it turned out, the 2nd one will end up a little different and a little better thanks to lessons learned while building this one. But that being said I think this one looks so fun! I am still trying to decide what colors to use as the accents, but I couldn't be more happy!

I have also nearly finished repainting the vanity. This one went from hot pink and fuschia to crisp classy black and white. I still need to paint the very edges of the drawers (ugh must keep my hand steady!!!!! ) and repaint the drawer pulls silver (or gold). I haven't decided on which color pulls yet as one twin will get silver and the other gold. One gal is a girly girl and the other is a tomboy, so I'm thinking the girly girl will get the gold and the silver will go to the tomboy. So these knobs will be gold. (nothing like making a decision as it's written! lol)

The other 'big' thing I'm working on right now is seating for the bedroom. In the 2nd loveseat pic there is a curved diamond-printed chair. I bought 2 of these as the print is prefect for the tomboys room (who happens to LOVE monkeys!!!) The second chair is being painted gold and being recovered in a pretty cream fabric with gold butterflies! *sigh* So pretty. Hopefully I will be able to finish it tonight and be able to share pics of that tomorrow!