I am very excited! This is my first post where I get to share an actual project. See, the problem is my patience…. I have none. And so, all the projects I have worked on recently are either completely done with only a before and after or they are the opposite; I’m only halfway through them and they do not look so appealing as of yet. More like you would want to run for the hills. Ha.
To put it simply, here is where I started:
When I laid eyes on this $8 handsome fella, I knew he would be mine, and already had an idea in my mind how I was going to dress him up. I first had to clean it thoroughly. Okay, kind of well. Again, patience; none. And then I whipped up some MMS in Ironstone, but made sure to add extra water to the mixture to get more of a translucent whitewash look than to actually paint it. I just picked up one of my low grade brushes and kind of hit spots all over where I thought it should be, wiping paint that was too opaque off immediately with a paper towel. It’s not really an art as much as a bunch of random mistakes gone right.
After that dried, I then went on to picking out images from thegraphicsfairy.com (whom I adore and couldn’t do half of my projects without). I still wasn’t sure where I was going to put the Mister in our tiny house, but I knew I wanted him to also be “pretty” and displayed, so I also made up my own picture from various clip art I had saved previously for the inside as a little surprise. I used the wax paper method, which you can find instructions for from a quick Pinterest search.
Here is what I came up with (Now, you will find soon enough that I can’t get enough of bicycle images. Don’t ask me why. I don’t even really care for riding bikes. But anything vintage and bicycle, I am all over it).
I put a coat of wax on (I used Briwax), let it dry, and buffed that baby out. You can see that the wax definitely darkened the paint, but I was okay with that. Wax is a beautiful thing in my eyes, and I like to use it on basically every single one of my pieces instead of any other clear coat because of the cohesion it gives between the paint and the piece, like it’s been that way forever:
But wait, we’re not done (no, I am not going to give you second slap chop for free)! He was all dressed up with nowhere to go, when all of a sudden I remembered we also were in the middle of a wine dilemma in our house from me rearranging furniture, and we no longer had room for the “bar” that was set up in the formal part of the living room. I had nowhere to put my wine. Which is a true travesty. Then I looked at our coffee bar, which is already one of my favorite parts about this house, and thought: Heck, coffee and wine together; I may never leave. On a whim, I tried out the tool box there with what I consider the wine essentials (don’t mind the hideous yellow price tag), and voila! It fit! Aren’t they just the perfect pair? I don’t think I will be rearranging this area for a while now.
Sovereign Design 