I’m responsible for the door prizes for my quilt guild this year. The prizes didn’t have to be extravagant. They are supposed to be something simple and nice. Most times the prizes are placed in a paper bag so are a surprise. This isn’t the rule just how it’s mostly done. 

Well, I’m shaking things up. I am keeping it simple and cheap, that’s what I was told to do. I’ve put together five door prizes monthly for $10, meaning $2.50 each. That’s my average. The shake up is that I don’t always place them in a bag and I don’t make all of them same. I like fun and I like pretty. Can’t help it. I just think getting a door prize should exciting.

This month I went with an Easter theme, of course. lol I found some really cute and cheap baskets at Wal-Mart for .88 cents each.

That’s better than the dollar store! Speaking of the dollar store. I bought Easter colored tissue paper for the basket bottoms instead of grass. That’s much cheaper. There is just not enough grass in one bag. I put together the rest of the goodies from extras in my sewing room. Doing this has been a great way of thinning out the extras in my sewing room.

The chalk paint I already had. With that, I was able to keep it cheap.

I liked the colors the baskets were originally but I wanted the colors to be softer. I love the look of chalk paint and knew these baskets would like great painted white. Since I already had chalk paint and it didn’t take much, why not!

I wanted the original colors to come through the white so I added some water the paint. Amy Howard paint is a little thick. So, adding water made it like a white wash.

I’m sorry I didn’t measure the amounts of water vs paint. Measuring is something I never do. Next time I will try to do better. lol

I can tell you I added enough water to thin out the paint. The paint was no longer thick but it wasn’t really watery. If you try this you may want to experiment for what works for your paint. Another side note. I’ve never used any other chalk paints so I don’t know if this is something you would need to do.

Here are the baskets after the first paint layer.

Aren’t they just pretty? The water I added to the paint caused the original paint to bleed into the white chalk paint. Made for such a sweet pastel color.

The next and last layer of paint wasn’t diluted so the baskets would be whiter. I painted the inside of the baskets. I then blended the paint that oozed through weave to paint the front. Meaning I didn’t paint the outside of the basket first. I used to paint that dripped through the weave from the painting the inside of the basket along with adding very little paint to the brush to paint the outside.

The wicker absorbed the some of the paint and the original paint colors were continuing to bleed into the white chalk paint. This caused the very faint pastel colors to lightly show through. I didn’t add the second layer of paint to the basket handles or the rims.  I thought this made for a great look.

I made some little peeps using a pattern from Raggedy Pants Designs. The threads were extras I had and the fabric octagons were left over from a blog hop project I did several years ago. Awesome! Hopefully the recipients will be able to made something wonderful with them.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by,

Linking to:

Metamorphosis Monday

The Scoop

 

 

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