Cunning crafts

Today it was a beautiful, sunny day in the mid-60's.  We went for a long walk and enjoyed the weather after all the bitter cold days we have had lately.  I've been thinking about needing to start in on my yard and gardening tasks for the spring, and decided to take on a little spring-related project.

I got this wooden bunny basket at the local Goodwill a few years ago.  I loved the shape of it, but the dark brown wood with murky blue painted stripes was icky to say the least.

  

I kept ruminating about what color I wanted to paint it and about a week ago I decided I wanted to do it white with some kind of French typography in black.  So, first I painted it white with a cheap white acrylic craft paint.  I did a sloppy job, because I wanted it to look rustic (yeah, that's why, not because I'm lazy or anything!)  Already it looked better than before...

I have some pretty-looking fonts that I have downloaded off the internet, and I got the idea that instead of using vintage graphics, I would just use the text of French poems about rabbits in fancy fonts.  So, I found a couple of poems online (helps if you know that rabbit is le lapin in French), and put them in nice fonts.  Then I printed them onto transparency sheets in mirror image and used an old credit card to scrape them onto the wood (see http://redhenhome.blogspot.com/2011/11/transparency-transfers.html for a tutorial).

I think I am going to put this in the kitchen and plant some herbs in the mason jars.

  

One funny side note:  I realized while I was transferring one of the poems and actually got a chance to read it long enough to translate it that I forgot the fact that the old French word for rabbit is no longer really used because it is also a code-word for lady parts. So in case anybody speaks French, I haven't shown you a close-up of the eyebrow-raising double-entendre poem about "the valley of the country of Tenderness"---doh!