Here Kitty, Kitty - Looking Glass Fail and WIN!

It seems that all my posts start out with the phrase "a while ago at a thrift store I found...".

Well, this one is no different!

On several repeated trips to our local thrift store Girlfriend had eyed these little kitties:

There were a lot of them at this particular thrift store.  We actually passed them by on 2 trips, but on a 3rd trip I finally picked them up for her.  They were bruised up, the finish was wearing off and the larger one was cracked.  They sat up on girlfriends dresser while we waited for inspiration to strike.

Well it did!  We both love mirrors and had wanted to try the new Krylon "Looking Glass" mirror finish spray paint.  I see a lot of fun projects being done with it on the blogosphere!

So these kitties became destined for some mirror-love!  First we washed, sanded and repaired the kitties.  Second, of course, we applied several thin coats of primer:

After the primer was totally dry, we started spraying on the looking glass paint in thin coats.  I loved how the paint went on, but was disappointed it didn't produce the mirror finish we were looking for.  They still looked pretty cute though, all shiny and all:

When they were dry they took their places on Girlfriend's dresser.  Right now she's undecided about keeping them this color.  That doesn't surprise me because this girly changes her mind rapid-fire-like (love the teen years!).  So the plan is two-fold.  If she keeps them this way, we'll apply a glossy clear coat to shine them up.  If not, she gets to pick a haven't-yet-used-in-our-apartment spray paint color.  Then I'll even update this post!

Even though owl's are all the rage right now, I sure do love the kitties!  These were able to get cleaned up and repaired nicely.  Now every time I go to the thrift store I'm going to look extra hard at all sorts of figurines because so much can be done with them.  I passed up some little birdie figurines on my last trip and I think I'm going to pick some up next time.  They would look so neat painted glossy blue sitting up on my bookshelf!  It's surprising where inspiration comes from.

But wait!  I wasn't done with the Krylon looking glass paint yet!  Because I didn't get the finish I'd hoped for it was a little bit of a fail - and we're the type of never-give-up family that always goes for the win!

Theatre Boy and I washed and prepped a jar.

Following the instructions (hmmm...maybe we should have done that the first time?) we spray painted thin even coats on the *inside* of a jar and set it out to dry.

Well, talk about ahhh-mazing!  The only way to describe how it turned out was WOW!

Here it is sitting on our end table waiting to hold something special.  I will definitely be using this paint for future projects.  I already have a couple in mind that I can't wait to get started on!

I used to be an exclusively redo-furniture kind of gal, but the accessory bug is starting to bite!

Thanks for stopping by today at BIG FAMILY/small apartment.  We hope you follow along with us as we turn our small spaces in Awesome Spaces one project at a time!