My Crazy UK Flag Chair And Other Things...

I know the first day of Fall isn't until September 22nd, but as we all know in retail it starts much, much earlier. In my mind August is when I like to start transitioning over to Fall...at the booth, mind you, not here at home...so I've been working on several projects for just that reason. I'll take pictures at the booth too, once everything gets in place.

With Fall being my favorite time of year, it bothers me none to play with brown hydrangeas, rusty metals, dark stained doors and ummm...my weird British Flag chair.

Yep, it's a deconstructed chair of sorts that I picked up at a yard sale this Spring and painstakingly painted the British flag on the seat. I put it in the back yard for a few days to get some weather and break up the freshly painted look of the flag....well, I forgot about my chair in the weather and discovered it just the other day once again. Whoops.

It had certainly aged, don't you think? I actually love what the weather did to it and I sealed it with some polyurethane to stop the paint from chipping any further. The chair didn't have a back and I thought it would be easy to cut a primitive back of sorts fairly easy when the time came.

But then I had another idea. Wouldn't it be sorta cool if there was a basket in place of the back? I know that's rendering it completely useless to sit on (although, not completely), but it would render it into a really interesting display for a deck or porch. I imagine geraniums or potted ferns in the basket-wouldn't that look cool?
Just for the record: Justin does NOT think it's cool. He doesn't like the chippy paint or the basket idea....but I just reminded myself of what Eleanor Roosevelt said. Do what you feel in your heart to be right-for you'll be criticized anyway. That can apply to painted chairs right? ;)

I went to Hobby Lobby and found a basket about the same size as the backing space and tied it on with some jute twine-completely temporary. I might cut a back for it, but for now, it's a cooky flower-basket-UK-flag-chair-thing. The Queen can thank me later.

Also going to the booth, a beautifully aged Texaco bucket. Nice and rusted to perfection, with no help from me.

I thought to myself, what else does my booth need for Fall 2013? A ginormous painted sign is what myself came up with.

Actually, it's a scrap piece of backer board that I had from another project (more on that later). I framed it out using tomato stakes of all things and went to town painting.

You guys have seen all my small versions of hand-painted signs, so I'm not going into the logistics and how-to's now, but this puppy is BIG and I'm hoping it will draw people in my booth.

Surprisingly, it didn't even take me that long to paint, the hand lettering part is the most time consuming. Not that I'm anti-stencil or con Silhouette machine, I just prefer hand lettering...just me a pencil, ruler and an eraser. If you'd like to see the tutorials click HERE and HERE.