Project House Update: The Birds and the Beach

You know how it takes me forever to finish a project? And like even longer to write about it? Well, today's your lucky day because not only did I finally get around to/finish two projects, but I'm going to brag about them now.

The first project was a shadowbox chock full of reminders from our trip to Hawaii in the summer of 2014 (see? It only took me 17 months to get around to it). The second was hanging a dove wall sconce that's probably been sitting in my closet for over three years.

I mentioned it in my list of tips for visiting Turtle Bay Resort, but we really expected to bring home a bag of shells as a souvenir. That was not the case. Every shell we found (minus a small piece of driftwood) is carefully arranged in this shadowbox. Maybe seven shells total.

Since I couldn't get as many shells as I wanted, I filled the void with beach sand. A lot of sand. This was only half of the sand. Dan's called dibs on the other half. Combine my sand, the shells, a great picture Dan took of me on the beach, and a high-quality shadowbox and you have something worthy of the term 'art'.

I say 'high-quality' shadowbox because this was not my first attempt at this project. Originally, I couldn't find a shadowbox I liked, so I bought a cheap one from Michael's and gave it a coat of paint. However, the back of it didn't seal well and I had to make a hanging mechanism because it didn't have a hook. Yeah, there was no way I trusted that on our wall. So, I found a pretty good one from Target and gave it two coats of spray paint. It even has a gasket around the end of the back to keep the sand in. Worth it.

Onto my unique choice in shelving...

Several years ago, I found this plastic dove shelf at the antique's fair. It's tied with my lamp for my favorite thing we've found out there. I didn't know what I would do with it, but it was vintage and birds and it called to me. Unfortunately, it was a gross 1970's color, but that could be easily fixed.

For a long time, I debated what color to paint it. Once I'd painted the sand shadowbox, it hit me that these might group well together so it got a matching coat of white paint. Someday I may change my mind, I could see it in an antique gold. Or a more matte white. Or even a weird painting project where I hand-paint it all the colors it should be, with brown branches and white doves with little orange beaks. If you've got ideas of your own, I've found one on etsy. It's part of a set even!

It was hard to find the right spot for them in the house, but I settled on the entryway. Here's the corner of the entryway before. It felt a little off-balance because only the left wall was decorated.

And now both walls are adorned. It felt a little awkward at first for displaying a picture of myself in a bikini in our entryway, but it's probably less creepy in the entryway than in the guest room.

I'm still styling and arranging things on the dove sconce. Since it's plastic and not even six inches in radius, I don't trust it yet to hold anything fragile or important. It hasn't earned my trust yet. We're still just acquaintances.