Project: An Idea Worth Stealing

This is an idea that I saw in a craft shop that I realized was totally worth stealing. The ones in the shop were glass vases that had been painted with chalk paint and embellished with lace, ribbon, and bits of antique jewelry, which got me to thinking....we all have a pin or pendant that belonged to a beloved grandmother or aunt that we can't bear to part with, but also don't ever wear. (In my case, it's my mom's favorite cameo.) Most of us also have some cheap glass vases sitting around. Since I have a T-boy, I bought a little metal vase from my local junk shop, spray painted it, and did a bit of sanding. Then I just pinned the cameo to a piece of lacey ribbon. Now it is out where I can see it every day and serving a purpose. I can imagine doing this with any old bracelet or necklace that a person would like to display. Really you wouldn't even have to paint the vase

Home Improvement: To match or not to match, that is the question.

Well, it was a long time coming, but our new door is finally installed. Our original door was not even remotely up to code--their was some speculation that it might even have been made and purchased in Mexico. The glass was an untempered bloody nightmare waiting to happen.
We thought really hard about whether to put in a Texas star rather than trying to match, but in the end, we were able to special order a pattern pretty close to the side lights. We did decide to order an oval window rather than a large rectangle like the old door since we new that the patterns would not match exactly, so we wanted to go more for a coordinated look than have it look like we tried to match and failed.
I get a lot of questions from clients asking if they should try to match this or that, and the answer is always different. If you can get an exact match for what you have, that's great, but if not, sometimes it is best to go for something completely different. Sometimes you want something just enough different that it doesn't look like a failed matching attempt. In the end, you just have to visualize things and trust your guts to tell you if something won't work.
Since there was no chance we would be able to match wood on the sidelights, we went ahead and ordered a much sturdier, higher quality fiber glass door. Then I started looking for a color that would brighten up our chocolate colored porch. I found it on the front door of a house the same color in Austin that was featured in HGTV magazine. Thank you Benjamin Moore for Majestic Blue.

The new door

The old door

The Austin home that inspired our color choice.