GW find before & after

I had found these 3 shadow box doo-hickies at GW last year for $2.50 a piece. (I think the GW here where I live is kinda pricey after seeing some of the GW deals here in Blogland) I saved the flowers JIC I wanna use them on a card or something. I learned this easy techniques to change the color if I need to and I'll post that if I do it one day, for anyone who might not know how to. But, back to my doo- hickies~

Before:

I had already started to take the one apart before I took the pic. I had to pry the vases off  with a flat head screwdriver cuz they must have used Gorilla glue. I actually ripped some of my frame off of a couple of the little shelves but I filled it in with wood filler before I painted it. Oh, and I learned that the putty kind takes 24-48 hours to dry but the gritty pastey kind only takes 2-4 hours to dry. Next time I'm using the faster one.

So I had to sand the excess glue off & use the wood filler & let it dry overnight (dangit!) before I could paint it black.

My plan was to print some B&W pics from the beach and put them on the back and glue some shells from the beach that my kids had actually picked up over the past few trips, onto the shelves. I just printed the pics out on cardstock and actually laid the frames on the paper to trace an outline so they'd fit just right. I only used pics of Cassie on this one cuz I had saved my pics to facebook and they were easy to find. I want to get more pics over the last 16 years but I'll have to look for them. I just wanted to see how it'd go, but I'll prolly change some of these out in the next few weeks as I get the rest done.

I started this on Saturday, thinking it was only gonna take a while. I was feeling pretty hopeful & excited at this point, but of course, it started raining so I had to wait to finish. I am one of those weird folks who, if I get an idea of something, I wanna do it NOW! Anyway - on Monday evening- this is how it turned out:

Before on the Left & After on the Right:

I had to take the glass out to take the photo, because of the glare. I also put it beside a before one so you can really see the difference. I took another pic cuz of the shadows:

Before on the Left & After on the Right:

And another to show the depth:
Before on the Left & After on the Right:

 The cream one with the flowers is the BEFORE & the black one with the pics is the AFTER . I'll take seperate photos nest time cuz my friend said it was confusing to have them both in the same picture.

I really love how it came out. I did try to sand some of the paint to give it a "distressed" look, but it didn't work very well & so I sprayed another cover coat on it. Maybe the paint wasn't dry enough since it was so humid still. I don't think you can see in the pics but I also took a stamp pad and went around the edges of the photos  and tried to get a better look on it cuz when I first looked at just plain from the paper trimmer- I wanted to add that touch. I should've taken a b&a shot of that so you could've seen the difference.

I put the pictures on the back with sticky dots instead of modpodge incase I wanna trade them out. I had thought it'd be cute to put different photos and doodads on the shelves for different seasons. You know, Christmas photos with little candy canes or some Jolee's dimensional sticker things something like that.

Thanks for looking and be blessed,

Karyl

This wasn't a garage sale find but a thrifty find nonetheless so I am linking to Debbie Doos Party on Fri Oct 15, 2010~