bird lamp

I want to try and source more vintage/customised lamp bases as a way to display and complement my screen printed shades. This was one recent find, a sweet but dated bird lamp which I had ideas for! As usual, I just got stuck in without taking any before/during after photos except for a couple of rubbishy iphone snaps... I will get my blog looking nice one day, promise. Anyway, here is it before minus dated shade and with a little tester paint that I initially tried:

 ...and here is after, once it had been masked, primed and sprayed with high gloss enamel in a turquoise shade. I specifically wanted a shiny clean look and not a distressed, hand painted effect so I opted for this enamel. It took several even fine coats for a smooth finish, but it is worth doing it in stages to avoid any drips or gloopy bits. The finish is a lovely high shine and the turquoise shade works well with my lampshades that are printed with teal ink.

Florence painted table

I recently bought a tin of Annie Sloan's Chalkpaint in "Florence", to paint a candelabra with. That project has been put on hold for a bit, so I needed another project to use for the paint. I found this side table in a charity shop. I thought it would be a perfect match for the rich emerald green of Florence!

The table didn't need much preparation, just a light wipe to remove any dust etc. I painted over the table with the chalk paint, painting fairly quickly and liberally. The great thing about this paint is that you can pretty much just "slap it on". I knew I wanted to work dark wax into it for an aged, textured look and so the paint needed to be quite textured to achieve this. Once dried I applied another layer of paint (as some of the dark brown was showing through). Again, I didn't paint too evenly and made sure that there were visible brush strokes for the dark wax to sit in.

Once the paint was completely dry, I sanded some of the paint back for a worn look, then I wiped a layer of Annie Sloan's clear wax all over the table. You can this with a brush (I am coveting one from her own range), but I am using a cloth at the moment - which works fine. With a different cloth, I worked in small amounts of dark wax. I concentrated on a small area at a time so that I could work the wax before it dries. I applied the dark wax in a circular movement, pushing it into the textures of the paint. I then quickly wiped off any excess with a cloth. I did this all over the table, building up the layers of dark wax until I was happy with it.

A final coat of clear wax was applied all over for protection. This was all buffed with a clean cloth to give it a smooth, shiny surface, with none of the "chalkiness" of the paint. It does have the look and feel of an old piece which has accumulated marks and texture over time, which is exactly what I wanted.

I'm really pleased with how it looks and love this colour paint, especially when combined with the dark wax.

This table is available to buy, email me or message me through my Facebook page if you are interested...thank you!


Products used:
Annie Sloan Chalkpaint in "Florence"
Annie Sloan Dark Wax
Annie Sloan Clear Wax
Annie Sloan website here

Chalk Paint Chair

This is a little bit of a "before" and "after" using Annie Sloan Chalk paint. I am a relative new beginner to this little joy, which has many enthusiastic users and now I understand why. I have painted a fair bit of furniture before but this chalk paint means no preparation and can be used in different ways to achieve different techniques. In this example, I used a chair from a charity shop which had thick layers of old gloss paint on it. With other paints, I would have sanded the white paint first to prepare a painting surface, but with this chalk paint there is no need!

So, above is the charity shop chair with its not-very-attractive thick gloss paint. The only prep I did was to wipe the chair with a clean cloth and then I just started painting. I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in "English Yellow'. I'm a bit obsessed with yellow at the moment. I painted a couple of layers of this stuff all over the chair, as Annie Sloan says in one of her YouTube demos the trick is to "just get on with it", so that's what I did!

This is the chair with its good coating of yellow paint - as you can see, there are brush strokes and texture in the paint. I painted quickly and in different directions to intentionally leave brush strokes in the paint. This is where the dark wax will sit to give a distressed effect.

Next, I applied Annie Sloan Clear Wax all over the chair, I used a lint-free cloth (my budget hasn't stretched to a £35 wax brush just yet) and again applied this fairly quickly, rubbing a layer of the wax all over. Next, I brushed in the Dark Wax, using circular movements and only working on a small section of the chair at a time. Excess dark wax was then wiped off with a cloth leaving it sitting in the textures of paint. Once completed, I used sandpaper in some areas to distress further and the whole chair was given a final layer of clear wax, to give it a smoother feel and durable finish.