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Easy Upstyled Glittered Horse Head Bookends #SwapItLikeItsHot

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Today, I’m excited to share a little thrift store upgrade with you.  I am participating in Swap It Like Its Hot,  a contest of sorts where bloggers send each other items that they found at the thrift store or flea market.  The recipient has to transform the item into something for their home.

These sorts of swaps are always fun, but really nerve wracking for me.  My style is different than most of the other bloggers participating, so I was really scared about what I would be getting in the mail!  Luckily for me, Katrina from Chic Little House sent me an awesome thrift store score.

Thrift store horse bookends upstyled with gold glitter.

Truth be told, I really loved these horse head bookends as they were.  One of the horses has a chipped ear and the monkey pod wood was a little scratched up.  But, what fun would that have been if I just left them as is?  No fun at all!

I decided that these would be great for Emma’s room, and I would put them on her dresser underneath the crazy carousel horse shelves.  I wanted them to have a little more character, so glitter came to the rescue.

Thrift store horse bookends upstyled with gold glitter.…

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A Project Fifty Years (Plus Two More) in the Making

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This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Elmer’s ProBond Advanced. All opinions are 100% mine.

midcentury modern plastic decorator panels turned window hangings via MakelyHome.com

I have a healthy skepticism of DIY products that promise the moon and the stars.  Even though I know that it’s completely bull headed, it’s always hard for me to believe that there are really such big advances in things like paint or glue.

So, imagine my feeling when Elmer’s approached me to do a review of one of their premier glues – ProBond Advanced.  Yes, the same Elmer’s that makes the school glue that I probably ate 30 years ago.  They asked me to create a mixed materials project that showcases ProBond Advanced’s ability to bond wood to metal, glass to concrete or ceramic to drywall. I generally make it a practice to not make projects just to make them (ain’t nobody got time for that!) – even if someone wants to pay me to do so.  This time, though, I did have a mixed materials project that had been on the back burner for some time, so I decided to give it a go.

Now for some history on this project.  Back in May of 2012 (yes, almost two years ago!), my friend Pam of Retro Renovation sent me an email and told me to go see a guy here in Austin who had stumbled across a bunch of brightly colored plastic decorator panels from the 1960s (Pam wrote a post about them here, where you can find more details about their history and more pictures of the different patterns and colors of the panels). The guy’s father-in-law is a picker who got his hands on an unopened box of these beauties in an old Pennsylvania warehouse.  I bought three of them from him – two are blue and have a bottle design and the other is green with a bubble design.  He told me to lay them flat so that they wouldn’t break (they are a little brittle from age), so I slid them underneath my bed.

And they were there until a few weeks ago.  Seriously….

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