Month

September 2015

My first project with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint!

I can’t remember where I first heard about Annie Sloan Chalk paint but I can tell you that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I do remember looking on Pinterest, seeing all the amazing pieces of furniture that had been transformed with this paint and deciding that I needed to find out what this was all about. After reading a few blogs and checking out the official Annie Sloan web site I made a list of things I would need. Then I did a search to see who sold it locally and found a cute little shop here in Utah called Drab 2 Fab that sells ASCP. I headed on over and went in to see what they had. I had already seen a list of the colors Annie Sloan had to offer, but in the store they had samples up on the wall. It was nice to be able to see, in person, what each color looked like once it was painted and waxed. I wasn’t 100% sure until I got there that Arles was the color I wanted to start with. I know – yellow! But have you seen this yellow? Amazing. So I purchased a can along with samples of Old White and Pure White. I also bought a can of clear wax and a waxing brush. All the blogs I had read about ASCP suggested buying the wax brush. They were right. It is a must have. I was excited to try out my new paint but I didn’t want to paint something in my house, hate it and then be stuck looking at it. Fortunately we had 2 end tables that were set to go to charity so they became my first project. If I hated them they would still go to charity and if not then yay for me – new end tables! 🙂

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These are the end tables. Kinda sad looking. They actually looked worse before I cleaned them. And as you can see I wasn’t able to remove the pen marks my kids left on them. :p

 

It was time to try out my new paint – I was a little nervous to tell the truth. I had painted fun holiday projects before, but not furniture so this was all new to me. I opened the can, stirred the paint and dug in. I used a paint brush I bought at Home Depot for the chalk paint.  It worked great. You can see the black large nail heads on the top. Those don’t come off so I painted around them. (kinda hard to tape those) I did get a little paint on them but ASCP is easy to wipe off, even after it dries, (before the wax) so that didn’t pose a problem.

Here they are, all painted in their glorious yellowness! See…amazing!

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Already I’m falling in love with ASCP!

One of the things I discovered is that you can generally see through the first coat of paint, which can be a fun look if that is what you want. I didn’t with these so I painted a second coat. Once it was painted and waxed I decided to add chevron stripes. Kind of daring of me don’t you thing. 😉 I painted these about a year and a half ago and chevron stripes were just starting to really show up on everything so I thought it would be fun. Thanks to Pinterest (I also LOVE LOVE LOVE Pinterest) I found a few posts that demonstrated how to tape a chevron pattern. These end tables are a bit rustic so I felt like it would be good to make the pattern a little less than perfect to keep with the style. Here is what that looked like.

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I used the sample of Old White that I had purchased with the Arles and I just did one coat. Once it dried I used sandpaper to distress it and then I waxed over the design. I was really happy with the results.

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I guess because I always knew I may not be keeping these (if I ended up hating them) I didn’t work too hard to make the pattern on each one identical. But I actually really like that they are unique. And in fact I ended up liking them enough to keep them. And now they are the end tables we use in our family room in our basement.  A year and a half later they still look great. Once the wax cures (this takes a few weeks) the paint is protected – even from my teenagers! 🙂

So these were my first project but not my last. I will be posting more project on this blog so come back and see what else I have painted.

Thanks for stopping by 🙂

Cindy