q is for quandie

Are any of you watching Fixer Upper on HGTV?  I had 4 different friends tell me that I just had to see this show.  If 4 people who know me well think this show is right up my alley, it must be!  Luckily, I found Season 1 in its entirety on Comcast on Demand.  So last weekend I had a Fixer Upper marathon.  My friend Meggan suggested a drinking game to go along with the show.  Every time Chip says “bucks” you have to take a drink.  Had I been playing the game, I would have been sloshed after just one episode!  And I watched about 10 of them.  Once you start listening for “bucks”, it’s hard to watch the show without giggling every time he says it.  Go ahead, just try it!

Aside from that, I have to say that I love Joanna Gaines’ style.

 Check out more pictures of the Magnolia farmhouse here.  If you aren’t watching the show, you should be!  And go ahead and add Meggan’s drinking game and let me know how that works out for you!

But meanwhile, I have a little fixer upper of my own to share with you today.  I purchased this industrial stool from my friend Sue at my own Carriage House sale.  No one else bought it (which is just plain crazy, it was $12), so I did!

Some people might have just left this stool as is.  But since I pretty much paint anything that isn’t nailed down (and even a lot of stuff that is), I decided to give it a little makeover.

I painted the entire stool with some custom mixed milk paint, the same paint I used on the Wintergreen dresser.  So, now it looks like this.

It has a metal base and a wooden seat.  From everything official that you read about milk paint, you wouldn’t think it would stick to metal without using the bonding agent.  However, I have found that isn’t always the case.  I’ve painted a couple of other metal pieces and not used bonding agent, so I decided to give it a try on this one too.  Worst case scenario, my paint would all flake off and I’d start over.  Instead I got some very nice chipping, but not too much chipping.  Here is a close up of the metal legs so you can see the end result.

In addition, the mixed milk paint I used was close to 4 weeks old.  Mixed milk paint isn’t supposed to last more than 5 to 7 days.  I’ll admit, it was a little stronger smelling than usual.  But other than that, I didn’t see any problem with using it.  Once I gave it a good stir, it wasn’t lumpy at all.  It had thickened up a little, but that worked in my favor on this piece.

I’m not advocating painting with milk paint that is past it’s due date, or counting on it sticking to metal.  However, sometimes breaking the rules works out just fine.

Last year when I shared a booth at Junk Bonanza with my friend Lori, she purchased some absolutely gorgeous vintage hat boxes from Belgium from another vendor.  I absolutely loved them, but they were priced way out of my price range.  Since my typical price range for such things is probably around $12, I guess that isn’t saying much, but let’s just say they were quite a bit more than $12.

I don’t have pictures of the exact boxes that she purchased, but they were similar to this.

I’ve always had an idea in the back of my head to create my own similar hat box, but recently when some of my co-workers introduced me to transferring graphics using gel medium I realized that I really should give it a try.

So I pulled out a hatbox that I happened to have on hand.  Before I started, it looked like this.

First I added a base coat of chalk paint in French Linen (a greige color), then I added two coats of white.  While that dried, I found a graphic that I liked from the Graphics Fairy and printed a reverse image of it on my regular old laserjet printer.

Once the paint was dry, I painted a coat of the gel medium onto the hatbox where I wanted the label to go, and then placed my printed image face down on top of that.  I smoothed out any bubbles and made sure it was nice and flat.  Then I left it to dry for a couple of hours.

Once it was good and dry, I used a wet cloth to wet the paper.  Then I gently rubbed the paper off, leaving the image behind.  I had to use a lot of caution because I was working on top of chalk paint.  As you may know, chalk paint can be distressed (or wiped off) using a damp cloth, so I had to work cautiously to make sure I wasn’t rubbing off any paint.  I did find that the gel medium protected the paint fairly well, but if I rubbed outside the area with the gel medium I did remove some paint.

Once all of the paper was removed, I added a coat of wax to the entire box.

And voila!

You can see that I had a little trouble with the upper right corner.  I think I didn’t have as thick a layer of gel medium in that spot.  I’m OK with that though, because I think it helps the box look aged.

I could have added a little dark wax to give it a little more weathered look as well, but for now I like the whiteness of it.

The alabaster lamp is one that I picked up at a garage sale last year.  I just re-wired it, which is super simple.  If you’ve never tried it, don’t be afraid to do so, it really is easy.  Do you recognize the skeleton lamp shade?  It’s the small white shade that I picked up on my thrifty field trip with its cover ripped off.  I just clipped on a vintage wedding photo instead.

So what do you think of my faux french hat box?  Do you think it comes close to passing for the real McCoy?  I can tell you that it cost way less than $12 to make, so it was right in my price range.

Update:  bad blogger alert!  I’ve been a bad blogger and not given you the ‘official directions’ for this project, which say to let the gel medium dry for at least 8 hours.  Also, if you’re wondering, the product I used was Liquitex acrylic gel medium.  If you want to try this at home, here is a much better step by step tutorial on how to do it yourself.

Linking up with:

My Salvaged Treasures and French Country Cottage

Remember my pile of goodies from my thrift store field trip?

You can’t see it very well, but the lampshade is sitting on top of a white metal shelf.  I think these vintage shelves were typically intended for the bathroom.  This one didn’t have much going for it, but I wanted to give it a colorful makeover.

So, I painted it with Cece Caldwell’s Santa Fe Turquoise, added some vintage wallpaper to the shelves, touched up the gold trim with some Rub ‘n Buff and added another Tim Holtz rub-on to the front.  So now, it looks like this …

I love using pretty containers for utilitarian supplies; a little crystal bowl for your cotton wipes, and a vintage pink elephant shot glass for your q-tips.

A while back I purchased a set of state trivia cards at a garage sale.  They are the perfect color for me, and I thought they would be fun for scrapbooking.  You might have noticed it clipped to the ladder in the q branch, but I borrowed it for this photo shoot to hide a nail hole in the wall.  Plus it plays into my “state of mind” theme perfectly, get it?

So, I happen to have a whole bunch of these cards for different states that I don’t really need.  If any of you are from a different state and would like your state card, leave me a comment and let me know what state you would like and I will pop it in the mail for you  (not available:  Nevada, Florida & New Jersey … and obviously Minnesota).  I don’t think I have every state, but I have quite a few.  First come, first served.

I’m not the only one who believes that lucky is a state of mind, right?

Update:  as of Sunday morning, I still have Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North and South Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Vermont.  Anyone?

In the past I’ve had a few people ask me whether or not I teach classes on painting.  Last year I taught a couple of classes that focused on milk paint at the Round Barn, but other than that I really haven’t done any classes.  But I’ve thought about it, and wondered if I could pull it off at my own house.  So when a gal I knew from a craigslist purchase mentioned that she’d love to take a class, I suggested that she and a friend be my guinea pigs.  After all, I have a lot of knowledge learned on the fly, and I am more than happy to share what I know with others.

The one big thing that I can offer in a class of my own is a complete lack of bias or focus on a particular product.  In other words, my class encompasses all of the various products out there, along with when, why and how to use them.  Since I am not selling any products here, I don’t need to be promoting a particular brand.  I firmly believe that both milk paint and chalk paint have their place.  Not all projects are good for milk paint, and vice versa.  I also have a couple of money saving tips, such as when you can substitute a much cheaper product, and when you can’t.

So on a recent sunny Saturday afternoon my guinea pigs, Emily and her friend Jess, came over for a class.  They each brought something from home to paint.  Emily brought some simple wood storage cubes, and Jess brought a toy box that she saved from the dumpster.  Someone she knew was going to toss it!  So she grabbed it and brought it along to paint.  I am kicking myself now because I didn’t get ‘before’ pics!  Darn!  But suffice to say, the cubes were already painted in pastel colors, and the toy box was painted black.  We assumed that all of them were painted in a latex satin or semi-gloss paint.

Emily and Jess learned how to decide which product is right for your piece, how to prep your piece before painting, painting with chalk paint, mixing and painting with milk paint, stenciling, distressing and finishing with either wax or hemp oil.

They used both chalk paint and milk paint on their pieces.  Here is Emily putting a coat of MMS Artissimo milk paint on one of her cubes, after having already painted the inside with chalk paint in Duck Egg.

And Jess went with an undercoat of Cece Caldwell Vintage White chalk paint followed by MMS milk paint in Apron Strings for the toy box.

We experimented with a hemp oil resist, and also with blow drying.  Here is Jess blow drying her toy chest (boy, that just somehow sounds wrong, doesn’t it?)

Originally Jess was going to stencil a number on the toy box, but once I showed her this french stencil, she knew it was perfect.

“sweet dreams my child, good night”

The Apron Strings was a great color choice for this piece as well.  Jess really liked the variations in this color ranging from pink to coral.  It really worked well for her, and it was a great way for me to show them this quality of milk paint (which can be good or bad, depending on what look you are going for).

Our class lasted just a tad over 4 hours, and both Emily and Jess went home with finished pieces.

It was really fun, and I enjoyed sharing my knowledge.   I think I learned a couple of things about how to make it go more smoothly next time (like actually have some handouts ready to pass out, oops).  I wasn’t sure we’d be able to fully complete our projects in that time span, so I was glad to learn that yes, it can be done.

I’ve got some ideas floating around in my head for future classes.  One idea is to have a class where each person paints a vintage cupboard door to turn into a ‘sign’, like my French Market sign.

Another possibility is a class where everyone goes home with a painted suitcase (but first I have to get my hands on some suitcases!).

But I also would be willing to just host some more classes where people bring their own item to paint.

So, if any of you locals might be interested in a class, please leave a comment or drop me an email at oakdalecarriagehouse@gmail.com

I’d love to hear from you!