Thursday, January 20, 2011

Anything Can Be Art: Old Bicycle Parts

This was a fun & easy project! When I first put up the floating shelves above my TV credenza I only had a concept for one shelf and not the other. One shelf displays 3 turquoise vases from Crate and Barrel. I bought them this past summer when the credenza and shelves were only a vision in my head! I was coming up empty for the second shelf until I found a very cool and inexpensive picture frame at Target. It is gray, yellow and white and has vintage looking bicycles all over it. Thought it was a good way to bring some yellow over to that side of the room. The frame wasn't enough to fill up the shelf, though....so this is when the idea of bicycle parts on the shelf came to me! But not just regular bicycle parts...high gloss yellow and white bicycle parts! Are you still with me!?!?

I picked up these 3 old bike parts at The Bike Project in Urbana. They are a non-profit organization that operates a small shop and is the only place in town I could find that sells individual parts! I think all 3 pieces cost me about $8. It was fun to root around in the boxes and boxes of parts, but I did end up quite greasy!

All three pieces had some grease and dirt on them, but the smaller gear was a mess! First step was to clean and degrease them. I bought a bottle of Purple Power degreaser and it worked great!
After cleaning and drying, I sprayed them with some white primer and then a couple of coats of high-gloss spray paint...two pieces in yellow and one in white.


Final product up on the shelves with the picture frame...

By the way...the image in the picture frame was something I printed off the internet from a Google search of "vintage bicycle"...makes it look more like art instead of sticking a family photo in there...


I like...I like! One of the fun things about shelves like this is that you can change them up from time to time to freshen up your room or use them for seasonal decoration displays...swapping out items on the shelves can give you small little fun projects as well as allow you to rotate your display pieces so that they all get a little time out for others to see...so, I guess we'll see how long the shelves stay looking like this...but for now, I am really happy with the way they look!

2 comments:

  1. What a neat idea Ashley! It looks great.

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  2. That's an "oma fiets" or Grandma bike - a classic Dutch bicycle. Good choice!

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