First up, congrats to Sue P. who won my Brandywine Valley giveaway!  Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a comment, I wish you could all be winners 🙂

I picked up this stool while out garage saling a few weeks back.

It’s just your typical shop stool, but it’s got a vintage vibe that I like.

After giving it a good cleaning, I first painted the entire thing in Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky.

It seems like whenever I mention this paint color, at least one reader thinks it’s a dark blue based on the name.  It’s not.  It’s a soft black.  Not quite as black as Dixie Belle’s Caviar, but still black.  Here’s a comparison of a few of the different shades of black available from Dixie Belle that I did back in 2021.

The Anchor is from DB’s Silk Paint line (ie. a 3 in 1 acrylic paint with built in primer and top coat) and you can see that it has a little more sheen than the two chalk paint options.

Anyway …

I painted the stool with two coats of the Midnight Sky, then once fully dry I taped off a Swiss cross on the seat and painted it with DB’s Drop Cloth.

Then I decided to add just a little something extra.  I applied one of I.O.D.’s Floriography paint inlays to the seat.

At first I thought the wording on the inlay didn’t really work on a shop stool, but I liked the look of it anyway.

But then I thought, hey, the Swiss cross has long been a symbol denoting a pharmacy.  Originally they were red, until the Red Cross sort of commandeered it.  Now throughout Europe if you see a green Swiss cross you know immediately that it’s a pharmacy regardless of whatever language is written on the sign.

So … maybe this is an old stool from the Pacific Homeopathic Pharmacy in San Francisco advertising their Cocoanut Cream.

Apparently it’s the most elegant face dressing in the world.  And it’s also entirely free from all irritating matter.  Who couldn’t use a little more of that in their life?

After first sealing the paint inlay with some Rust-Oleum matte spray sealer (always seal your paint inlay before rubbing over it in any way), I then sanded spots here and there to add some faux wear.  Then I applied a coat of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta over the entire stool.

And that’s it.

I’m a pretty big fan of stools in general.  Currently I have 4 in my own home.  They are great for tucking into a spot that just needs something, like the space between my pantry door and my bathroom door.

  They also make a good nightstand in a pinch.

They work well as plant stands.

And they also make a great perch for a big stack of books.

So if any of you local readers think you have a good spot for a stool, this Swiss cross stool is for sale.  Check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page for more details.

Thank you to Dixie Belle Paint Co for supplying their products used in this makeover.