Freckled Girl Life: Creative Thrifting

Welcome to my first post on my new design blog! I have been wanting to start a blog for awhile designated to all things DIY, thriftiness and creating a home you love on a budget. I have a love of turning unwanted thrifty finds into treasures to cherish, or taking an item you already have and tweaking it a bit with a little DIY skills to make it unique and I am also a sucker for a good deal. I find a love in being able to creatively redesign an item that someone didn't want anymore, but that I see has great potential. I hope you join me on my journey of finding my next great design in a good clearance item or that unwanted piece from the local thrift store! Hope you enjoy!

Popcorn Barrels

My latest project was coming up with a way to store 500 bags of 6 flavors of popcorn for my church's women's conference vintage popcorn themed night. I had a couple of hiccups along the way and the original project idea changed twice, but I was thrilled with the end result. I was first given the idea of using apple baskets, but I would need so many to fit 500 bags of popcorn that I decided half wine barrels would be a great alternative, plus I loved the idea of repurposing these beautiful wine barrels. I wanted to some how vintage the wine barrels even more, but make them look pretty so I came up with the idea of buying a stencil and stenciling the sides of the barrels all the way around. I purchased a stencil from LightsForever on Etsy for around $12, it was a 10" x 10 5/8". The colors I needed to incorporate were blue and green, the shades were up to me. I purchased the wine barrels off of Craigslist for $20 each, which from my research seemed to be the cheapest deal around. Once my stencil came I was ready to purchase the paint, I already had the chalkboard paint, but still needed to purchase the spray paint and frames. My mother-in-law came up with the idea of using frames to display the flavors of popcorn, I was originally going to chalkboard paint onto the barrel, but liked the idea of getting junky frames and spray painting them all the same color and using chalkboard paint on the glass. I was able to get all 10 frames I need for $10 bucks at my local thrift store.

We removed all the frames from the glass so we could spray paint the frames and chalkboard paint the glass separately, makes everything much easier! The best part is when your painting frames you don't have to worry about if they don't match, I just look for the most potential in a junky frame, such as a cute design on it that will show through once painted or has good lines that will look nice, they don't even have to be all wood, we used a mixture of plastic frames and wood.

I used spray adhesive to hold my stencil in place while spray painting the stencil, you can find spray adhesive at your local craft or hardware store.

Before you decide to chalkboard paint anything make sure the surface is clean.

Since each barrel was going to have 2 flavors in them I had to come up with an idea to be able to divide the barrel into two compartments, my father-in-law helped me and used some cardboard I had to make dividers and then you can just take them out when your done and use the barrels for something else if you wanted to. To hang the frames on the barrels, I used twine and my dad help me string it through the slits of the barrel so it looked as if the frames were hung on the sides of the barrel.