Getting my Craft On!

It was a most glorious Sunday here at the Anarchy Estate. A front came through bringing bright blue skies, a cool breeze and a  warm sun, it could not have been more beautiful so I took the chance to work outside a bit on a project that I have wanted to finish for a couple of weeks!

Of course I am going to have to play the lame card since I cannot for the world find the before picture of this  little cabinet.  But let me just say... when was a deep orange-brown varnished finish ever popular on anything?  Whenever that was this is piece is of that vintage.  What it did have going for it was a cute shape and SUPER solid construction. Couple that with a $3 price tag and I snapped it up in a thrift store heartbeat.

After purchasing it I primed it right away and then painted it blue.... then it sat ( see below)... and sat some more, in fact it sat for well over a month. I then found some super cute trim and added that. Exhausted from that effort I obviously needed another rest and it sat again until today.

Today I decided that I wanted to be outside in the sweet sunshine and fresh air not to mention I wanted to try out my new Annie Sloan Chalk Paint!

The paint was interesting to use, thicker and a bit stickier than I am used to but such a nice finish and it needs no priming. I look forward to using it on more projects and getting a better handle on how to best use it since it really is wonderful for decorative painting since it dries without a finish.. so when you sand you get a power residue not little curls of latex. A much more realistic aged look if you ask me. 

I left the inside blue which is a nice contrast to the cream and brown wax finish I put on the outside of the piece. But my favorite part by far is the image I added to the front of the cabinet after it was painted and sanded a bit but before I waxed it.

Here I am going to have to cop to the happy accident of finding out that my very favorite transfer medium TAP does not do well when applied to fresh paint. I suspect if I had not been so impatient and let the paint dry/cure long enough I would have gotten a perfect transfer but honestly I am THRILLED with how this took to the surface in a very random fashion and the paint even bubbled up off the surface in places due to the heat of the iron.   To me it gives it the look of an old handbill that had been glued up and then has given up slowly to the ravages of time, rather romantic...no?  The images are from the ever wonderful Graphics Fairy ( link to the left)   I merged them in Photoshop so the image I started off with looked like this. I used the waxes to help blend everything in and add age and a protective finish.  I could not be happier with how it all came out!



What do you think???