My "new" craft table!

I finally finished my craft table! Here's the before:

And here is the beautiful after!

It's still sitting between my living/dining areas. I think it's going to be my "paint area" until warmer weather decides to stick around. I originally wanted to stain the table top, but after sanding and sanding and sanding, I discovered that parts of my table are no longer quite flat and even after using a stripper (outside), I couldn't get the finish completely off, so I mixed a nice dark brown and painted it. The wood stain was looking a little too reddish anyway, so I'm much happier with the way this turned out. The legs I painted in SW Evening Shadow color matched by HD in Behr paint. We bought the paint for the guest room and changed our minds so I have over 2 gallons of this stuff sitting around now. I like this color a lot though and might just use it in our master bedroom, when I get around to doing that room. I still haven't done the chairs, since we still haven't gotten new dining chairs to replace the old ones. I'll post that when I do it.

This table is the first step in making our loft a great usable space for our family. I'm really excited to get to work on the next piece of furniture - an orange nightstand/endtable. I'm going out of town tomorrow (without the kids, by myself to visit family and friends back home - I love my husband!), but when I get back I'm hoping to start making some serious progress in our loft!

And here's the first project I did on my new craft table (while the legs were drying). It's a cute frame for my niece. It's her birthday this weekend and I'll actually be around for it, so I thought I'd make a little something. Here's the frame, sorry it's sideways. I'm not sure how that happened.

Here it is finished and hanging on my wall. My mom told me she likes pink and I'd seen this tutorial (can't find it now) that I absolutely LOVED a while ago. I liked it so much, I read through it several times that day and hunted up all the supplies I needed just lying around the house. However, I didn't have a place to put the finished product, so I never did it. I was so happy to have an excuse to finally do this craft the other night.

I took a Dollar Tree frame and painted it pink. I hot-glued the glass into the frame and cut my niece's name out in reverse in vinyl. I put the vinyl on the inside of the frame. For the flowers, I used a compass to draw various sized circles then cut them out. I crumpled the circles up, then flattened them and "inked" the edge with more of my pink paint. I hot-glued the buttons and the flower circles together then hot-glued them to the frame. I really liked how it turned out and wish I had a girl so I could make one for her too. This little project cost me nothing since I had the supplies on hand, but even buying the supplies, it wouldn't be more than a couple bucks.

I'm off to finish a vinyl sign for my mom, since I'm gonna see her this weekend!