Pearl Heart Wall Plaque

At the beginning of the month, I went poking around down in Arkansas at some 2nd hand stores looking for shelving for my craft room.  I found this hideous beauty:

I know, it's awful, but I was thinking I could put a lot of stuff on those three tiered shelves.  I didn't love the heart cut-outs, so I figured I could take them off and hey, with Valentines Day coming up, maybe I could do something with them. Of course, they were glued AND nailed on.  I got out my chisel and Dremel. I Love my Dremel.

Now I have 3 projects to do.  They're pretty rough, have a lot of stain on them and I really didn't want to spend a lot of time prepping them because well, they were just kind of ugly. I poured some deglosser on a rag and wiped them down and called it good.   Here's what I did with the first one:

Pretty cute huh?  First, I drilled a couple of holes to hang it.  Then I painted it red. After looking at that irregular heart shape in the not quite center for a while, I got out some tacky glue and put pearl beads all around it. Then I tried to stencil it.  I'm awful at stencilling.  I know it takes patience and I'm really going to practice.  Really I am.  So I totally screwed up the stencilling and tried to wipe it off.  Fail!  The red paint came off with it.  I had to repaint some of the red.  Ugh!  Man, I really wanted that stencil on there.  Finally, I traced the stencil design on with a pencil and dug out an old paint pen that I had and just painted it.  Not great...but better than it was.  Finally, I stuck a bow on the bottom, strung a silk cord through the top holes and there ya go!  You could fasten a picture on the back I suppose...but I like it without.
Tomorrow, I'll show you the other 2....or maybe just one, depending on how productive I am today.  (I'm having the in-laws over for dinner so some cooking and cleaning must happen sometime between now and 6 p.m.!)

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