Think Pink! Two Easy {and girly!} DIY Projects

I love instant gratification projects: things that take hardly any time (or effort) and turn out really great.  Up today are two of these projects that have one thing in common: the color p-i-n-k.   If you have about 30 minutes, you can do these projects.  I'm sure it will come as no surprise that they were for my daughter's room.  I grabbed a can of Valspar's "Pink Burst" spray paint and got to work.

The projects were simple upgrades: (1) painting an inexpensive frame pink and (2) painting and creating a fun design on a basic white plastic step stool.  Here's what I did:

Project 1: 

Updating a Picture Frame

My kids always get a class picture of their friends and teachers from pre-school, and I had not gotten around to framing Little's picture.  I wanted something fun and sweet and (of course) did not want to spend a lot of money.  When I was redoing my mother-in-law's dining room, I bought some ridiculously inexpensive (i.e., less than $2.00 each) frames at Wal-Mart that were on clearance.  The frames didn't quite work for my mother-in-law's room, so I hung onto them and figured I might be able to use them in my house.  Bingo!

Here is the frame before:

And here is the frame after a quick couple of coats of Valspar's Pink Burst gloss spray paint.   By the way, I highly recommend buying one of the spray paint triggers pictured below to help with these types of projects: so much easier and faster, not to mention neater!

Here's the frame in Little's room.  It looks right at home.

Project #2:

Updating and Painting a Step Stool with a Fun Pattern

I bought this plastic step-stool at Target years ago, and we have gotten great use out of it.  Big used to have it in his bedroom, but when he turned the big five, he decided he no longer needed it and gave it to his little sister.  The white is just fine, but pink would be divine!  Here it is before.

Rather than just spray on the spray paint, I decided to add a fun print on top. Why not?  I started with the stool, the same Valspar Pink Burst gloss spray paint and my favorite painter's tape, the green Frog tape.  I used the tape to create a diamond-check pattern on the top.  First, I made diagonal lines in one direction.  Once they looked about right, I used a putty knife and gently trimmed the edges.  The stool had a small lip around the top so that's where I cut the tape.

Then I did the same pattern in the opposite direction and trimmed those edges as well.  Here's what it looked like.

The pattern looked right, so I got out my spray paint and let 'er rip. I gave the stool a few coats and when it looked nice and even, I tore off the frog tape to reveal the print.  Ta da!

There you go!  All told, it took me less than 30 minutes from start to finish.  Gotta love the power of spray paint.  What about you?  Have you done a similarly easy, quick and cheap update? Please share!

See you swoon,