Creative Designs from the Heart of Alabama
Becky is currently working on creating an ocean theme collection of pottery…She has always had a love for the water and especially the ocean, this inspired her to start making images of ocean creatures out of clay. Here you see a few of the things in her growing collection. Soon you may see this inspiration emerge in some of her glass work as well.
Becky takes ordinary items, dresses them up and many times gives them a new life as something different. What she does with jars is an example of the diversity of her creations.
An antique dining table had seen better days but Becky saw what it could become. She took it and sanded it to its bare form and refinished the top, distressed the bottom and it was transformed into a piece that was wanted by several. it found a new home and a renewed life.
The antique dining table was done with the combination refinish and distressed method She often uses. The first picture is the table in progress, the second is the finished product. This was a popular item initiating requests for commissioned items. The original is sanded down to bare wood for the portion to be stained and sealed, and the rest to a point to accept paint. Becky then sands areas to reflect wear and uses a stain to accentuate the spots until she is satisfied with the result. The piece is then sealed either with a permanent wax sealer or a poly finish depending on the anticipated use for it.
Sometimes a discarded piece of furniture seems to whisper “There is something hidden here…take me home!”. An old headboard with a broken down frame seemed to be saying just that when Becky scooped it up. In this instance, the nice lines of the headboard cranked up the creative processes and Becky knew that there were real possibilities! It wasn’t long before an empty space on the front porch and that old headboard combined into the thought of a romantic porch swing.
For this project, Becky constructed a new base to match the width of the headboard and reinforced it so that it would hang securely. A discarded foot-board from another bed, a little trim, and some added hardware brought the swing to life. All parts were given a unifying finish to camouflage the combined pieces. Finally, the swing filled that empty space on the porch with a romantic place to curl up with a book or take a nap.
The final product was given a special Becky touch with a padded seat and several throw pillows. Depending on the season and the need for sun or shade, the swing finds a home on more than one place on the porch…thanks to overhead beams that can safely handle the load.
Some old doors are so far gone that they are no longer good candidates for use in a doorway. Becky sees those antique doors in poor condition and transforms them into a functional, attractive pieces of furniture.
It is not unusual for Becky to adds a table, shelves, and maybe hooks to them give an old door new life as a kitchen piece, a hall tree, or even a desk. With a little trim to congeal the look of the combined pieces the transformation is nearly complete. Becky’s special touch of distressing and finishing the surface completes the transformation.
Pictured here is an antique cypress door remade into a hall tree or table. It is currently being used in a kitchen as a hot beverage retreat.
So, what do you do with an old bed that has seen better times but is too romantic to be discarded? The headboard caught Becky’s attention first…and then came the thought of salvaging the remainder to create a bench. Becky built a bench seat using the salvaged bed parts and the applied her signature distressed surface treatment to the whole project. With the addition of a few, colorful throw pillows, the Bed-to-Bench project is ready for a new life!
Traditional stained glass work generally involves leaded canes or copper foil as the structure of the glass. In Becky’s studios many of these creations use various mediums on antique distressed window frames. Her projects may be soldered stained glass designs in the traditional sense or they may be cut stained glass and tiles combined with other items to create unique pieces of impressionistic art. No two creations are alike. Some pieces are grouted, some covered with a resin material and some produced with soldered stained glass. For Becky, imagination and creativity reign over what some might consider the ‘rules’ of stained glass work.
