From Drab to Fab!

I finally got to do what I love best, paint furniture!  A few weeks back I found a small two-drawer cabinet at the thrift store.  It was originally $10 but it was 50% off day so I got it for $5!

 
Although it was a bit grungy it had good bones.  I really liked the design especially the cute pearl-like detailing around the drawers.

 

Most of the detailing on both the sides of the cabinet were broken off so I decided to remove what remained and leave the sides plain.

Here I am with a chisel and hammer to chip the remaining detail off the sides.  We have smaller chisels but for some reason I thought this was a job for our gigantic chisel??

 

After removing the side detailing I used a nail set to knock the remaining nails below the surface of the wood.

I used wood filler to fill in the nail holes and any dents in the wood.  I then did a quick sanding to smooth out the wood filler, old glue, and to rough up the surface of the wood before priming.

I then applied two coats of Martha Stewart paint in "Peony".  I also painted the cabinet hardware with spray paint in "oil-rubbed bronze".

And here it is our fabulous new cabinet!

And look at the detailing!  Isn't it cute!

It found a home in our front bedroom.  I'm planning on incorporating some coral colored-items to go with the light blue for a beachy/ocean type vibe.

For a look something like this:

spaces design

 
by John Wiley featured in House Beautiful. Photo credit: Ngoc Minh Ngo 

 My cabinet is a little more on the pink side but I wanted more of a coral color than orange to match some fabric I plan to make a pillow from.

So that's the plan for the front bedroom.   Woohoo for furniture painting!

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A Starving Artist

If I was an artist I would definetly be starving. With that said, lately I have been trying my hand at painting. I would love to have more original works of art in our house but since we don't have the money to fund that I thought it would be fun to try to paint a few things myself.

A while back when I painted my music lyric wall art I bought a few tubes of acrylic craft paint.  Later I found some canvases on sale at Michael's and more acrylic craft paint for less than $1 and thought  I could try to paint something for our bedroom as we are lacking pictures on some of the walls in there.  My first attempt was a dandelion, I thought it would be simple but wasn't happy with how it was turning out so decided to paint over it and try something else.  Lately I've really liked paintings of rolling hills covered in oak trees, it reminds me of where my grandma lives near the coast.  So I also gave that a try although right now it is looking more like a child's painting.........and not a gifted child :o( 

I wasn't sure what to do next with the rolling hill painting so I put it away for a while and decided to try something else.  I also love paintings of fruit and have been drawn to pear paintings recently so that was my next painting attempt.  I think I'm much better if I can look at something and try to imitate it than paint something from a picture in my mind.  I didn't have any pears at home so I found a photo online.  I first traced an outline of the pears as you can see here:

Then I painted the background and filled in the pears and hoped the finished product would be something I wouldn't be embarrassed to hang on our wall!

And here it is, my painting of three pears:

 

I'm not the next Rembrandt or anything near but for our own art collection it will do.  Painting is really challenging!  Even something that looks like it would be simple is not .......... at least for me!  But I'm happy with my pears, I even added some dimension with shading.  My shadows and highlights might not be correct but, hey, I was trying!

 

Painting is a lot of fun, even if the end result isn't what you had hoped for.  Sometimes it's enjoyable just to play around with the paint and every once in a while you might get something you aren't too embarrassed to hang on the wall!