MY CHALK PAINTING ADVENTURES
In September 2016 we left the lovely but a bit cramped Brighton behind us and moved to the calmer and cosier seaside town of Seaford. The new place was going to be more than twice as big as our old flat and it was so much fun to acquire some new and old pieces of furniture.
Charity shops (flea market run by a charity) in England are amazing and there is an abundance of old dressers that people don´t want anymore. I had some very specific requirements, but it didn’t take long to find just what i was looking for.
Now for the life of me I cannot remember where or when I learned about chalk paints from, but the plan was to go nuts with them in the new place, and so I did. 😃 I´ve had some people ask me “why on earth would I paint these lovely wooden pieces?” and the answer to that is “because I really want to!”. 😛
Materials Used:
- Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in the following colours: Emile, Duck Egg Blue, Antibes Green, Florence, Louis Blue, Barcelona Orange and Old White.
- Annie Sloan Clear Chalk Paint wax
- Annie Sloan Black Chalk Paint wax
- Rust-oleum Chalky Finish Furniture Pain in Mustard and Dusky Pink
- Deco Style (Aldi) Chalk Furniture Paint in Duck Egg
- Deco Style (Aldi) Clear Furniture Wax
- Shellac; used to prevent wood grain bleeding in any previously untreated piece. I also used this to touch up the cracked varnish of some of the old chairs before painting.
- 4 meters of thick white cotton fabric from Ikea
Tools:
- A variety of paint brushes. My favourite turned out to be a brush left in the new flat by the previous owner. 😛
- After waxing a couple of chairs with a piece of cotton fabric I treated myself to the smaller Annie Sloan Wax Brush, so worth it.
I’m often too eager to get started with the creative fun so there will be some pieces I forgot to take the ‘before’ shot of. The starting colour of most of these was light to dark wood with a shiny, but often cracked varnish.
This here is my Emile Dresser. I looked through quite a few before I found one that was just right. Glass doors, glass shelves, strong magnets on the bottom doors and in excellent condition. And this beauty was a total steal at 80 pounds, yey!
Three of these chairs were given to us by Luke’s aunt and uncle and two of them were being thrown out by our neighbor. Thinking back now, there is a small chance that our neighbor had just removed them from her flat whilst she was dusting, in which case they are stolen, but I hope they enjoy being a part of this happy pastel rainbow gang.
So going nuts with the paints is definitely what I’ve done. There are lots of smaller things around our home that I’ve painted from photo frames to these pine cones. You can really just use it on almost anything.
Cake stand and stool are both painted with Annie Sloan Antibes Green and finished with black wax.
My most recent Chalk Paint adventure was using Annie Sloan Chalk Paints on 100% Cotton Fabric. I did watch her video on painting fabric and dip dyeing fabric, but my painting was a bit of a cross between the two.
I (once again) didn’t have the patience to make notes of what I was doing, but these are the things I learned:
- Water to paint ratio varied per colour. I had made some of the brighter colours lighter, by mixing them with Old White, and I feel like these ones needed less water.
- Too much water and the paint work wouldn’t stay solid or smooth.
- If the fabric got wet before painting, it would not absorb the colour.
- Even dried colour stains were very easy to wipe off other surfaces 😃
After the fabric had dried I put it in the tumble dryer for two hours, after which I washed it in a 30 min cycle at 30℃. The colour stayed through this wash very well and I was very please with the result. Even with all the white lines and inconsistencies. 😃
I used the fabric to make a new headboard cover and pillow cases for our bedroom. About time too as we were still sporting the 2015 Christmas designs 😛 But this can sometimes happen when you give birth early Jan and all your craft projects get put on hold, right?
4 Comments
paul
I like what you have done 🙂
LemonBee
Many thanks 👍🙂
Christa Yost
Can I ask if the chairs have held up over use? I’d like to do my dining room chairs, but worry the paint will wear off the chairs.
LemonBee
Thanks for asking. I personally feel that the paint is very tough, but it has worn off slightly after 4 years of constant use. Rather than chipping off the paint has worn off gradually giving a nice shabby chic effect, but by now the seat and the back rest could use another coat and waxing. Hope this helps. 🍋🐝