I love the Jellybean row houses in Newfoundland. The colours, the shapes, everything about them appeal to me. A few years ago I noticed someone in my neighborhood had a jellybean row house mailbox and I’ve wanted one ever since. I’ve kept my eyes out at craft sales, but never found one. I searched online and found some beautiful crafted mailboxes, but they’re all more then what I’d be willing to spend on a mailbox.
A couple of months ago I started to think about how I could make my own jellybean mailbox. I love crafting but wasn’t sure if I had the skill or patience to take on this project. I found a simple black metal mailbox at Home Depot for less then $17.00 and decided to give it a shot. A quick trip to the craft shop and $15.00 on paint later, I was ready to start.
I decided on five colours and played with the paint bottle arrangement until I found the colour scheme I wanted
I began my painting the front of the mailbox white. I wanted a nice clean slate and was worried that the paint wouldn’t cover over the black well.
Next, I used painters tape and taped off areas so that it was broken down into five paint-able sections. I forgot to take a picture of this step, but I painted three of the sections first, then once fully dried I taped up those sections and painted the remaining two. It ended up taking a couple of coats of paint each colour in order to get a nice cleat coating of paint.
I was worried about how I would paint the windows and doors as I don’t have a steady hand and am not the greatest at painting or drawing straight lines. I dug through my craft cupboard and found little square tiles that I could use as a guide. I lined up seven, two for a door and five for windows, and using a fine tipped sharpie, outlined the tiles. After I outlined each section/house, I used a fine paintbrush and carefully painted the insides of all the squares.
I struggled with outlining the black windows and doors, but found an oil based sharpie white paint pen at the crafting store. Of course I had a coupon, so it cost only $4.00. Using a ruler as a guide, I traced the shape of the doors and windows with the white sharpie paint pen. I varnished the front with four coats of leftover Americana varnish in matte and was very happy with the results.
After spending only $36.00 in supplies, I finally ended up with the Jellybean Row house mailbox I wanted.
