Recently I was a guest on My Repurposed Life...WOW!!!
Thanks so much Gail for having me over, and letting me share my latest creation...Southern Blue Belles.
I scored these two vintage beauties at a garage sale for only $5 each, and I fell in love. It took about 6 months to come up with a plan, but I finally decided on distressed blue, with a little bit of glam. I always start with a plan, but you know what they say about the best laid plans...
Picking a color is always troublesome for me, but I finally settled on a one of the Historic Preservation colors from Valspar... Oatlands Dainty Blue. At some point I really need to choose a color other than blue...maybe next time!
Next I got the rest of my supplies together to make up a batch of Paris paint, (my version of Annie Sloan chalk paint). I do love the original "Chalk" paint, but I am a DIYer at heart, and mine is super easy to make. Wanna try it? You can get the recipe HERE.
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| Plaster of Paris + flat paint = Paris paint |
The great thing about Paris paint is that you don't have any prep work...just paint, sand and wax. Gotta love that! I didn't want to paint all of the inside, so I grabbed my Frog tape to ensure straight lines...
Once everything was taped I grabbed my brush and got busy painting. The Paris paint will have brush marks, but no need to worry, the sanding takes care of it.
I left the center of the drawer face unpainted so I could add a little glam. While the paint was drying I headed over to Mac's...
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If you live in the bay area and you need glass cut this is the guy to see....thanks Mac! I got 4 mirror panels for my drawer fronts for $20, and he had them ready the next day. Mac...your the man!
I set the mirrors aside for later and started the sanding process...NOT my favorite thing to do, but the Paris paint makes it easier. For the smoothest finish I used a fine sandpaper...
I spent the next few hours preparing my drawer pulls. Since I opted for the "no hole" version of mirrors, I needed to have pulls that were flat...out comes the hack saw...
I would not recommend this...it was tedious and exhausting work to cut all eight of these posts off. Next I painted them with a satin nickel finish from Rustoleum...
It was at this stage of the plan that I stood back to admire my creation, and I was disappointed...not the plan! I loved the distressed blue, and the touch of glam, but the drawer pulls didn't excite me, and they needed a punch of color. Time for a revised plan. I searched the web and found a little color inspiration...Orange!
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| Source - harvest furniture With the new color chosen I decided to paint a flower on the top of each table. When I painted my Nursery Mural I used stencils, but this time I wanted a more whimsical feel, so I started sketching...  
Before painting the flower I outlined my sketch with an orange Sharpie...
To paint the flowers I used orange, then added shading with red-orange, peach, and white. The center colors are brown and yellow...
  
After the flowers were finished I waxed both tables....and then I giggled with delight! Seriously, I was so happy with the new pop of color, and I could hardly wait to see them finished. I only needed to secure the mirrors, find the perfect drawer pulls, and add a little something extra...
My something extra was adding my favorite passages of scripture to the inside of the drawers... a visual reminder of the power of God's love every day...
 
Before heading out to buy drawer pulls I remembered my recent Thrift finds, which included a few vintage glass knobs....Perfect! Wish I had thought of these BEFORE I spent all that time with the hack saw.
To find the center of each mirror I used a ruler to draw a straight line from corner to corner, like so...
To finish up I attached the knobs to the mirrors with epoxy, and waited 24 hours for the epoxy to set.
And finally my
"Southern Blue Belles" were done...Here they are...
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