HGTV, Museum Intern Style

I think at the end of my passionate rant in my last post I mentioned something about refurbishing some old educational kits for the Diggers artifacts . . . Well here is a visual representation of the refurbishment process! This all took about a total of six days to complete. All of the supplies I used were already at the museum/in their workshop. I had to get a little crafty with some things. There were several stretches of time when I was literally watching paint dry for a little bit. I loved every second of this project! Before refurbishing the kits, I submitted a proposal to the curator about the goals of the kits as well as their design. I'm really proud of how they turned out. So, without further delay:

The artifacts! I cleaned them up a little bit to remove excess dirt (the rust on the pick axe head was a lost cause). There were many more artifacts. The ones pictured were selected from a group of the artifacts that the curator wanted to use; out of that group, these are the ones I selected.

Supplies! The original paint I wanted to use turned out to be solid and very strange-smelling... Naturally, I switched to plan B.

A close up of the kits to be refurbished. Through the foggy cover, you can make out fossils that were used in a previous lesson (ages ago).

Sanded and smooth!

Prettily primed and ready to be painted!

When deciding what color(s) to paint the kits, I really did not want to use white or something generic. I decided to use the museum's colors in their logo (after hunting in the paint closet in the museum's workshop, I found colors that come pretty darn close to the real deal). This would make them visually appealing, but wouldn't take away from the artifacts.

NMHFM's logo

Shout-out to Mom and Dad who demonstrated to me at an early age how to be awesome at using painter's tape. I hope I made my family proud.

Almost done with painting...

Ta-da! Complete with coat of sealant. I also cleaned the plexiglass covers.

Now for the artifacts. I got to use a label maker for the first time which was an exciting experience. Technology is pretty amazing. Yes, label makers impress me. After laying the artifacts out on a piece of foam fitted to the interior of the kits, I used a box cutter to make cut-outs under each of the artifacts that corresponded with their shapes. I laid all of this on top of another piece of foam inside the kits. These cut-outs help to keep the artifacts in place.

Kit #1

Kit #2

Before and after!

HGTV called. They wanted to recruit me for a new season of Love It or List It, but I told them I wasn't about that celebrity life. ;)

Like I said, I loved this project! It gave me the opportunity to combine curatorial skills with handy skills I picked up through time by painting my room when I was in high school, doing home projects with my parents, and working on designs in my interior design class in college. Everything is interdisciplinary and interconnected!