Friday, August 14, 2015

Milk Can restoration

Hi everyone - I can't believe that it's been April since I've done a blog post!!  Things have been crazy at my house so I haven't had much crafting time.

Today's post doesn't use any paper or stamping supplies but I thought I would share it with you anyway.  Back in July my family took a mini vacation to Pennsylvania.  On the way home we made a detour to the Elephant's Trunk Flea Market in New Milford, Connecticut.  I've watched Flea Market Flip on tv and really wanted to check out this flea market.

As we were walking through I spotted this old milk can.  I've always wanted to have one of these just because I think they are really cute.

This is what it looked like when I bought it:


Once I got it home then I had to decide how to refinish it.  Of course the first place I looked was Pinterest for some ideas.

To begin I used a grinder to get all of the old chipped paint off - here is what it looked like then:


I didn't even realize that it was yellow underneath the black paint.  

Next I spray painted it with Rustoleum Rust color paint and then sprayed it lightly using Rustoleum Hammered Gray paint - I wanted some of the rust color to show through to make it look "old".  Next I made some stencils using my Cricut to recreate the wording "Hood Registered 1941".  I spray painted the wording heavier with the Rustoleum Hammered Gray.

This is how it looked after it was painted:


The final step was to figure out how to decorate it.  Once again I went to Pinterest to get some ideas.  I knew that I wanted to put some cattails in it because I really love cattails.  Luckily I happened to drive by a field filled with cattails so I pulled over and grabbed several.  I also wanted to put some other filler grass in along with the cattails.  I found some wheat grass at Hobby Lobby that I thought would look really nice.  I arranged the cattails and wheat grass and then added a burlap bow and some pinecones.


I really love how it turned out.  Now the trick will be to keep my 2 cats from destroying it!!

Thanks for stopping in for a visit.  I'll try to not be away for so long next time!