No Empty Chairs

A while back my friend Kimberly posted this on her blog.  There is a quote from Ezra Taft Benson that says, "God intended the family to be eternal... May he bless us to strengthen our homes and the lives of each family member so that in due time we can report to our Heavenly Father in His celestial home that we are all there--father, mother, sister, brother, all who hold each other dear. Each chair is filled. We are all back home."  

Then she cut out chairs out of pages of old books, framed them, and tied a ribbon around the frame with each person's name in her family. 

Well...I liked the idea so much, that I wanted to do it too, but I wanted to put my own spin on it.  I bought 5x7 shadow boxes from Michaels with the intention of finding a cute dollhouse chair for each family member.  Well, after months of searching and not finding what I wanted, I settled on these cute plastic Barbie chairs from Ebay.

Then I used grey automotive primer on them (that's all we had) and then I used white acrylic paint once the primer was dry. 

The shadow boxes were black, but my living room is primarily brown, so I bought this super cool spray paint.  It has metallic flecks in it and gives a nice texture to whatever you spray.  I sanded down the shadow boxes, took out the glass, and sprayed them.  I ended up having to keep the glass out of all the shadow boxes because the chairs were barely too wide.  I backed the shadow boxes with craft paper and voila, my own version.

Each chair has a tag on it with a family member's name.