I’m continuing to pull old pieces out of the pile in the carriage house.  A friend of mine passed this bookcase on to me a while ago … dare I even say, it was probably a couple of years ago.

It was pretty in the existing white, but the paint that was used was a little too shiny for my taste.  Also, I snapped the ‘before’ photo above after I sanded it to prep it for painting.  So it wasn’t really distressed when I got it either.

Because this is a smaller piece, I decided to go big with color.  I’d recently ordered Antebellum Blue from Dixie Belle Paint Co and I was dying to try it out.

It took two coats of the Antebellum Blue to cover the white.

Once I had it painted I wanted to add just a little something extra inside the bookshelf.  I considered using a transfer, but I didn’t have one that was a good fit.  So instead I decided to add a stencil.  I had a feeling that a metallic gold would pair beautifully with the Antebellum Blue, and I had also recently ordered the Moonshine Metallics paint in Gold Digger (also from Dixie Belle).

By the way, I used that Mini brush shown above to paint the bookcase.  It’s so much easier painting inside a bookcase with a short brush like this that let’s you get in there without knocking the end of your brush into the underside of shelves.

But back to the stenciling.  I hadn’t used the Gold Digger before, and I wasn’t sure how it would work for stenciling so I decided to do a test board first.  I always recommend doing this when you’re trying out a new product or technique for the first time.

So I painted a piece of board in the Antebellum Blue, and then stenciled it using the Gold Digger.

So far, so good.  You’re going to see that test board again in a minute.  But first, I went ahead and added the stencil (the stencil is from Maison de Stencils) …

I then left everything to dry for about 24 hours.

The final decision I needed to make was what top coat to use.  I was debating between hemp oil or clear sealer when I remembered the Easy Peasy Spray Wax (also from Dixie Belle).  I’d forgotten I had that in my arsenal.  So I pulled out both the Spray Wax and the Dixie Belle flat sealer and once again grabbed my test board to try them out and decide which one I liked best for this project.

What I discovered was that the Easy Peasy Spray Wax smeared the Gold Digger just a bit, so I was glad I tried this on the test board first and not directly on my bookcase.

And remember, this was after 24 hours of dry time, so it was quite dry.  It’s just something to keep in mind if you are ever using these two products together.

Despite that, I still decided to use the spray wax because it really is easy peasy.  Simply spray it on, let it sit for 10 – 15 seconds and then wipe with a clean cloth.  I just avoided wiping across the gold stenciled area with my cloth so as not to smear the metallic paint.

I really love the pairing of the gold and the Antebellum Blue, don’t you?

This shade of blue also pairs beautifully with the Sawmill Gravy that I used on the chair I shared last week.

As always, thanks to Dixie Belle Paint Co for providing the paint and the Easy Peasy spray wax, and thanks to Maison de Stencils for providing the stencil for this project.

If you’re looking for Dixie Belle products you can find them here.

The stencil I used can be found here.

And if you are local and in need of a petite Parisian bookcase, check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page to see if this one is still available.