Tag Archives: Crafts

Simply Done

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Hepcats Haven

The are reproductions of original postcards from Hawaii. I These have a matte finish so they will not fuse to the glass. I could have used originals but I taped the back of these cards to the top of the bar and that may ruin them.

Here is a simple way to “Retro” something up. You can do this to any furniture that has protective glass on top of it. You can do this with family pictures, postcards, fabric or any kind of memorabilia. The only thing I can warn you about is if the finish on the pictures you are putting under the glass is glossy it may fuse to the glass ruining your pictures. If they are glossy then you will have to place those clear rubber bumpers under the glass to keep air between the two surfaces.

Here is what I am starting with

With this process you need to make a dry run and see how you want to lay out the cards before you tape them down. I tried it a couple of different ways to find what looked best.

I love the imagery of these cards. They make you want to jump on a plane and fly to far off tropical places.

Mel and I think this simple little trick is great! If you have a beat up surface or a surface you do not care for then this should help. The glass was about $60 bucks and the postcards were about $35. It would have taken a lot more effort to re-Formica this and I honestly we do not think it would have looked better than it does now.

The only thing we are waiting on now are the cushions. They are over at B&T upholstery. I expect we will have them sometime next week. We can not wait to see this bar finished.

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Posted in Restorations and tagged Arts, bar, Crafts, hawaii, retro, tiki, Tiki Room, travel, tropical, vintage. Bookmark the permalink.

Another Shirrell Graves

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Hepcats Haven

You might remember a couple of months back we purchased a fantastic yellow Macaw painted by Shirrell Graves. It had a broken piece of glass and the mat was stained and ugly. I took it to Tim & Ann at Wholesale Art & Framing to replace the glass with UV preservation glass and to install a new mat. After a day or so it was done and here is how it looks:

The mat is an olive color with a black core.

Then about a week ago I was cruising Craigslist and saw that Roseville Antique Trove had a dealer that was selling a Shirrell Graves red macaw! I jumped off the couch, grabbed Mel and we shot over to acquire this fantastic piece. Mel and I were afraid it could be a print but upon further examination it is an original. It was apparent that it had been hung in direct sunlight because the once vibrant red had faded to almost a tan/pink. If you look at the bottom where the tail is you can see how red this use to be.

This is why you need to put any watercolor you love in preservation glass, it blocks 98% of UV rays.

On a side note, when I took the red Macaw out of the frame I noticed on the cardboard backing this fantastic little image:

This really helps to date the piece.

I plan to hang these in our bathroom (away from any kind of steam). We seem to be going for a tropical fish and bird theme in there at this point.

Here it is after a quick restore of the watercolor and Tim re-framing it.The red now pops and really helps bring this bird back to life.

These will look fantastic hanging next to each other and with the protective glass I will not have to worry about them fading anytime soon.

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Posted in Restorations and tagged Art Deco, Arts, bunnell, Carlo of Hollywood, Crafts, Craigslist, Glass, Hot Glass, Materials, Mel, retro, Shopping, tiki, vintage, Watercolor. Bookmark the permalink.

Heywood Wakefield Revival

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Hepcats Haven

This group of sad-looking Heywood Wakefield pieces are a part of my next series of projects. If you study the photos above you will see that these have been used and abused.

Look at these two sad sorry end tables. The guy we bought them from proudly advised us he painted one of them blue and he went further to tell Mel and I he had planned to paint the other one red! AAARRRGGGHHHH! An intervention was required.

The first piece I took on was the coffee table model M905G produced for only one year during 1955.

Gosh! Had the previous owner ever heard of a coaster!

As I have mentioned before the great thing about Heywood Wakefield is that it is SOLID wood. If a piece has any issue usually you can sand out most of the imperfections.

Here it is sanded down and ready for stain. This will help get rid of all the water rings and will even out the finish.

Now that it has been sanded the next step is applying that famous stain that I get from Jeff off Ebay!

Here it is after its first coat of stain. I applied 4 to 5 coats to get that nice buttery finish.

After a lot of staining and buffing between coats it is finally finished. I even had a piece of 1/4 inch glass cut from a local glass store ($30) for the top so another water ring never has a chance to appear. Without further delay…

As usual Jeff’s finish always turns out great!

Before I had glass cut for this piece I was under the impression that getting glass cut for furniture was costly. But it really isn’t, and it is worth it. It only takes one careless placement of a glass with condensation to mess up your finish so spend a little and preserve what you worked so hard to restore.