Nursery (phase 2) - I can't help myself

I have become a crackle whore (notice I said crackle, not crack). This is so much fun to do, especially when your job is to point your finger at what needs to be done and have your husband do everything.

First, here is a picture of the dresser. It finally made it's way upstairs, carried by mom and husband.

Secondly, here is all the snoopy "gear" for the bedding and curtains. We are still waiting on more snoopy things. This baby is going to dream of snoopy.

I have bought some snoopy appliques (wall decals) that husband was not too thrilled to have it glued on his brand-spanking-new painted wall. I decided that instead I would buy cheap picture frames at Michael's and glue the appliques on them.

Since the frames didn't come with a background for the appliques, I bought a hard paper with the same color as the walls of the nursery (special for frames - you can find them at Michael's, by the frame section) and had husband slave on cutting the matching squares.

I plan on hanging those snoopy pictures on top of the dresser.

Another thing I bought at Michael's was Matthew's name's letters. I plan on hanging them (I mean, have husband hang them) over the baby's crib.

And here is where the crackle whore comes in.

Here is a piece of the snoopy curtain's colors (which is the same as the bedding) that I decided to play with. I thought, "hey, this room needs some of this ugly green").

I went to Home Depot, bought some Asparagus-named color and decided that the frames and some of the letters would be crackled with that tone.

I started the crackle process the same way as we did with the dresser, minus the primer. We painted the frames and letters with the base color that matches the walls of the nursery.

We waited for them to dry and applied the crackle glue.

By the time I applied the first coat of paint with a brush, it turned out HORRID and it didn't crackle at all!

I looked outside and realized that (DUH!) it was raining and cold, and those factors affect how the crackles do their thing.

Wonderful husband had to sand all the letters that, by the way, got stuck to newspapers (after all, crackle glue is glue!)

I started with the base color all over again.

By the time we applied the blue color, we found out that the crackle was no longer sticky, so the blue didn't crackle as much. We used a blow dryer to heat and dry up the crackle. The blow dryer worked like magic! Everywhere the blow dryer passed, it crackled immediately. Very neat and kinda spooky (and perfect for rainy days).

We used a roller this time and it looks a lot better. Note to self: brushes are not your friend when weathered crackling.

Here is how the green ones turned out (click on the pictures to see them in a larger image).


It doesn't look like much now, but stay tuned to see how it all comes together!