Gravel Art Revisited

A couple of posts ago, I shared my misadventures in attempting to recreate from scratch the mid-century craft of gravel art picture making. If you missed it, you can find it here:
 http://sheertrashroadshow.blogspot.com/2016/04/she-thought-it-was-ordinary-blog-post.html )

And in case you're thinking I've figured out a solution to that problem, I haven't. Not yet, anyway.

But I did have some success refurbishing this charming but worn pair of gravel pictures I picked up at a thrift shop recently:

These delightful pictures obviously adorned some happy child's nursery long ago, and despite the slight damage/wear I was glad enough to fork out $3.49 apiece for them (minus my 15% "senior" discount, of course. Hey, I'm not proud!)

Let me show you some close-ups so you can see the areas to which I refer. Isn't this just the cutest thing? I love these animals!

The tiny plastic cabochon birds and fish are an especially delightful touch in this vintage cutie!

This picture wasn't actually in rough shape, but the trims that used to be portholes were all broken off and only the mysterious bases remained. (This tantalizes me--what did they look like originally? Whatever they were, they were something 3-dimensional; these remaining bits certainly aren't from large sequins.)

X marks the spot: a bit of the original pre-printed pattern can be seen where a sequin broke off.

The circus train had a few more issues, however. The train wheels (large bangle sequins without holes) were either missing or were banged up and scratched, and the pompom balloons were pretty grungy. And there was a little missing bugle bead on the railroad track.

It was time to dive into my trusty stash of bits and bobs.

After a bit of trial and error, I ended up choosing these big colored google-eyes to replace the broken portholes for the ship (Noah's Ark?) picture...

and I found some plain white buttons and spray-painted them to replace the wheels of the circus train. 

That, plus a bit of surface cleaning with a damp cloth and a Q-tip, and the balloons were divested of most of their grubbiness.

And now, to enjoy them for a while in their spruced-up state, before ultimately offering them up for sale in my soon-to-be reopened (and renamed!) Etsy shop. I'll hang them in my bathroom, where most of my other nursery-type cute stuff is displayed. (One of my favorite people in all the world recently remarked, "This is a fun bathroom!" which pleased me greatly.)

A very special someone!