I shared my mini Welsh cupboards a couple of weeks ago (there’s only one left, so act quickly if you want it), and today I’ve got the dining room sets that I promised would be forthcoming.

I ordered three of these dining sets from Hobby Lobby.

They are unfinished, and they come with cushioned chair seats that can be glued in place once you’ve added a finish to the chair.

This is the same dining set that I have in my dollhouse, and I decided to paint this first set in a similar fashion to my own.

The chairs and table base are painted in Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage, the table top and chair cushions have a wash of Drop Cloth ( approx. 2 parts water to 1 part paint), with grain sack stripes in Dried Sage and a re.design with prima knob transfer over that on the cushions (for more detail on how I did those chair stripes, check out my original post here).

I still love this look.

But I have to admit the next set has surpassed it as my favorite.

For this set I gave the chairs, seat cushions and table base a wash using Dixie Belle’s Burlap mixed with equal parts water and paint.

I gave the table top a slightly more transparent wash using about 3 parts water to 1 part paint so that the wood grain would show through a bit.

Then I used just a small section from the bottom of one of the I.O.D. Ephemeral Type stamps and very gently stamped it onto the chair seats using VersaFine Clair ink in a color called Pinecone (I found my ink at Hobby Lobby).

I had to practice that a couple of times on a spare cushion first.  If I pressed too hard the image would smudge.  But once I had my technique down, it was fairly easy to stamp the chair seats.  Also, keep in mind I am stamping these before gluing the seat cushions onto the chair.  So they were laying flat on the workbench.

Speaking of which, here is your q tip for today, clothes pins make awesome ‘clamps’ for gluing miniature items.

In this case I placed a piece of cardstock between the cushion and the clothes pins to keep the cushions from denting.

I did seriously consider swapping out the dining set in my own dollhouse for this one, but ultimately decided that the one I have works better with my Gravel Road sideboard.

That being said, I had to have one of these chairs for myself so after perfecting my stamping technique (which involved painting over the seat with solid paint rather than a wash a couple of times and re-stamping it), I’m keeping that spare chair.

I went a bit shabby chic with the third dining set.

For this one I started with a base coat of Dixie Belle’s Coffee Bean so that I’d have something to distress back to.  Then I added two coats of Drop Cloth to the table base and chairs, and a Drop Cloth wash to the table top and seat cushions.  Then I used 220 grit sandpaper to lightly sand the edges to bring out that dark underlayer.

Next I applied some more re.design with prima knob transfers to the seats.

I added a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax over everything including the chair cushions to add a little protection.

Much like with the Welsh cupboards, I will be listing these dining sets on my ‘available for local sale‘ page (but they can be shipped to non-local buyers in the lower 48 states!).

So we have Dining Set no. 1 (Dried Sage with grain sack striped seats):

Dining Set no. 2 (Burlap with stamped seats):

and Dining set no. 3 (Drop Cloth with floral seats):

They are $60 each, including shipping to the lower 48 states (or $50 without shipping).  For now I can only accept Venmo or PayPal as a form of payment for shipped items.  Each dining set comes with the table and four chairs.

I’ll mark them sold on my ‘available for local sale‘ page once they are spoken for (first come, first served).  If interested in purchasing one, please email me at qisforquandie@gmail.com to make further arrangements.

In the meantime, which dining set is your favorite?  Leave a comment and let me know.