Little Mod Podge Bench

I've had this sad, ugly little bench for a while now. I can't even remember how I came to have it in the first place. I actually tried to sell it in two different garage sales. Nobody would buy it. Have any idea why?

Could it be the ugly Raggedy Ann and Andy plus Teddy Bear plus daisy motif? (Apologies if you actually like that motif.) Well, it isn't exactly my cup of tea, but I like the size and shape of the little bench so I decided it needed a Nitty Gritty makeover. I looked around Mr. Nitty Gritty's man cave for some paint stripper, and lo and behold! What did I find?

Leftover aircraft paint stripper from that F-18 I garbage picked and re-painted Heirloom White. I kid, I kid. Don't ask where this stuff came from. Seriously. Don't ask. So I read the label and all it really warns me about is to not use it on landing gear. Well OK then! My bench does not qualify as landing gear, so I'm good to go!

So far, I'm pretty impressed with the job the aircraft coating stripper did on the bench. The wood survived and everything.

Once the yucky paint was long gone, I sprayed on a few coats of primer so it ended up looking like this:

So far, so good. After the primer dried, I painted it (you guessed it, Heirloom White, and I was pretty pleased with the results. But as I kept looking at it, I thought it was missing something. I wanted to distress it, but instead I decided to Mod Podge a piece of pretty scrap book paper on the back part of the bench. I think it turned out pretty cute:

Trash to Treasure Basket

Remember that basket I garbage picked last week? I transformed that ugly duckling into a beautiful swan (at least I think so). I started out by spraying her with several light coats of Krylon's Almond in satin.

I wanted to do something besides just paint the inside, so I picked out some cute scrapbook paper and lined the inside of the basket with it. Once the paint on the basket dried, I covered unprotected surfaces with blue painter's tape and sprayed the inside of the basket with Elmer's Craft Bond.

It's a little hard to see in this shot, but I painted the bottom inside of the basket, so I covered that surface with blue tape so that the adhesive would not get on it. I also taped the edges of the basket to prevent those from the spray adhesive. I lined the basket with the scrapbook paper then Mod Podged it. This was the first time I had ever used Mod Podge on a surface that was not completely flat, so I had to go back and touch up a few areas with my hot glue gun after I was done. Here is the finished product: