Recycled Junk Decor: Love And Luck

Red And Turquoise Wall Decor

Having a big collection of rusty junky stuff and vintage quilts comes in handy when making recycled junk decor. The project today is all about love with a bit of luck thrown in.

Recycled Junk Sign

In honor of Valentine’s Day  (coming soon) I put together a junk project featuring a heart. I’m not big on decorating with hearts but for Valentines Day I can handle it. This DIY heart love sign is perfect for the vintage junk lover.

Miss Sofi always wants to make heart cookies when she’s at the house. Just about every Friday night we cut the store bought ready-to-bake Chocolate Chip cookies into heart shapes. I tried to get her to do Christmas trees, candy canes, stars, anything but hearts during the holidays but she’s a die hard heart fan. So I know she will love this sign.

I made a few “Love Signs” in the past and thought I would try something different this year. I went through my junk stash and came up with the “I” letter, the rusty horseshoe, the cutter quilt, and a reclaimed piece of wood. The heart is a template I cut from plain old white paper.

Junk Stash

I have hundreds of pieces in my junk stash, everything from drawer pulls to rusty saw blades to metal shutter dogs.

I painted the reclaimed wood piece white but after a little thought and looking at the items I gathered for the sign I decided to paint over the white with turquoise.

Once the paint was dry I distressed it just a bit with sandpaper then “ aged “ the paint with Howard’s Wax in Golden Oak. See how the dark wax gets into all the rough places? Very nice.

You may notice that the “I” is not the original piece of junk I selected for the project. I just didn’t like the real “I” letter. I tried the white side of the I and the blue side, then added toner to age it….still didn’t work. I told the JTS it looked like a dog bone. It took me another hour or so to find the perfect “I”.

I hot glued the horseshoe and metal keyhole thingies in place while I hunted for screws. Screwing the items to the board makes them much more secure.

I used the paper heart template to cut the multi-color heart from my cutter quilt. I used hot glue to adhere it to the board.

I also hot glued the red/silver handle to the key hole thingies. I would have preferred to screw the handle to the board but I didn’t have a good way to do that.

A simple wire hanger for the back. Two screws with thick wire strung between them.

I think I’m in Love. The red hearts pop against the turquoise........one of my favorite color combinations. And for an added plus......horseshoes symbolize good luck and an upturned horseshoe is supposed to capture good luck.

You can't beat a good recycle project. Every part of this project is reclaimed.

The vintage red and silver metal handle has been hanging out in my junk stash forever. It came off of a cabinet door. It's just like the one on the Hardware Christmas Tree cabinet door. You notice the base of the handle has white paint on it. It looks like glue….but it’s paint.

I used Howard’s Wax on the rusty horseshoe. Isn’t that little red heart the cutest.

Recycled projects are one of my specialties. These are 3 of my favorite upcycled  "Love" projects...Love Letters Assemblage Art.....Red Upcycled Love!.....Junk Love. (click any pink link to view the projects.

Thanks for being here. I love you guys, Kathy