I’m excited to tell you about my first experience with Milk Paint. I have been painting furniture with Chalk Paint for several years and I love it. But I decided it was time to try something new. Honestly I love the shabby chic look as well as the farm house style and Milk Paint fits the bill for both.

I have a booth at All Fixed Up in Lehi Utah where I sell my pieces and for a long time the store only sold Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and so we only painted pieces with ASCP. But several months ago the store started selling Sweet Pickins Milk Paint. So this week I brought home a sample of Sweet Pickins Sweetie Jane. This little shelf seemed the perfect candidate for a Milk Paint make over. Here’s the before picture.

I cleaned it up and started mixing the Milk Paint. It comes in a powder and needs to be mixed with equal parts water to powder. I read on the Sweet Pickins Furniture blog that warm water is best for mixing the paint.

This package had 2 oz of powder so I added 2 oz of water. This is my first try at Milk Paint so I wasn’t sure what to expect but it seemed a bit too thick to me so I added a few more drops of  water until it felt like the right consistency to me. It went on smoothly and I was comfortable with how it was spreading so I went with that. The 2 oz covered this piece with one coat and I had just a small amount left. I only planned to put on one coat because I wanted this piece to have minimal coverage but I wouldn’t have had enough to do another coat if I had wanted to. This is what it looked like with one coat.

Like Chalk Paint, one coat does not completely cover. You can still see the brown finish showing through. I left the house for a few hours after painting this and when I got home it looked like this.

Lots of chippy goodness! 😃 I used a fine sandpaper and started lightly sanding. I’m going to tell you right now I didn’t do enough sanding. I will get to the wax I used in a moment but when I started waxing this I was getting a lot of paint chips still coming off. I think this piece may be unique in the sense that the original finish was chipping a lot. It was pulling off with the Milk Paint and by its self. Milk Paint has a way of deciding where it wants to stick and where it doesn’t want to stick. I will do another post on Milk Paint after I do another project with it and tell you how that one goes compared to this one. I’m curious to see how it will react on a different finish.

Anyhoo I resanded using a lot more pressure and a lot more of the Milk Paint came off. Which was what I wanted. 😊 There is a learning process with this paint just as there is with Chalk Paint. But both paints are very forgiving so mistakes are easy to fix.

There are a few different kinds of Finishes you can use over Milk Paint. Sweet Pickins has an oil wax and a cream wax and a few other finish product but for this I chose the cream wax. The oil wax has a mildly unpleasant smell that goes away once it’s applied and buffed but the cream wax smells like a mix or citrus and bubble gum. It goes on easy and smoothly and buffs off easily as well.

I used a lint free rag to put it on and buff it. I let it sit for 10-15 min before buffing it off. I was still getting some paint chips but for the most part it was the brown finish coming off. But after buffing the cream wax the paint was nice and smooth and beautiful. I let it sit for 24 hours to finish setting and I LOVE it! 😍 And no more chipping paint!

This looks like it came right out of an old farmhouse. I love that in some areas the paint chipped completely off. It makes this cute little shelf all sorts of interesting! I’m loving Sweet Pickins Milk Paint and I already bought more and am ready to try it on another piece. I will do another post soon and tell you more about this product and what I have learned about it. But I can tell you right now that you should try this yourself. This was really easy to use. There are lots of colors to chose from and I would suggest going to Sweet Pickins Furniture and see what she has to offer. I think I may try the oil wax on my next piece so I will share my experience with that as well.

Have you used Milk Paint before? Please leave a comment below and tell me your experience and I’d love your advice. If you have any questions about this or any of my other posts please leave a question in the comments.

Thanks for taking a look at my latest post! Hope you have a great day!

Cindy

Annie Sloan has several Blue options and all of them are beautiful. I did a post a while back and I featured a chair painted in Aubusson Blue and then white waxed Annie Sloan White Wax Finish. I think this blue is so pretty so I wanted to use it again. With the popular jewel tone colors showing up in home decor I think this color fits the bill.

It couples beautifully with whites and grays and adds a bit of sophisticated color to a room.

I bought theses tables from a neighbor and they were in good shape but had a few blemishes.

If you want a new look to a piece of furniture or have a piece that is worn or scratched, painting it is a great way to fix it and feel like you have a brand new piece of furniture. For these tables I pulled out the paint sprayer and gave them a few coats of paint. Thanks to the spring like weather we’ve been enjoying I’ve been able to work out in the garage a little more. The paint sprayer works better when it’s not freezing temperatures, as do my fingers! 😉

I use the HomeRight Finish Max sprayer and it works great with Chalk Paint. I will do a post soon on using a paint sprayer. It’s a game changer! I usually go around and touch up the paint with a brush to cover any places I missed and once it’s dry it’s time for sanding. I like to take a piece of sandpaper across all the lines and edges of the table to give it more texture and depth. I distressed a few areas of the legs but I didn’t do a heavy distressing. Then a coat of clear wax and these tables were done!

Do you just love this beautiful blue color? 😍 And again those legs. It’s brand new again!! Tell me what you think. Leave a comment cuz I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for taking a look. I appreciate it!

Cindy 😊

Some pieces of furniture can seem a bit complicated and overwhelming. This coffee table has a basket weave pattern on 3 sides. As I was considering how to paint this piece I had visions of  me painting each of the individual weaved areas with a small brush for hours and hours and then waxing each small area for the rest of my life! 😉 Haha So to avoid that misery I decided to go with a different approach.

I thought this piece would be a perfect candidate for a distressed, brushed look that can be achieved with a Chip Brush. A Chip Brush has less bristles and is uneven at the end. This is a great Brush to use for the dry brush technique. When using a chip brush you want to use as little paint on the brush as posible. I dip just the end of the brush into the paint and them dab it on the paint lid until most of the paint is off. Then lightly brush over the area. You will be able to see the brush lines in the paint. You can go as light or heavy as you want.

I was careful not to get any paint in the deeper areas as well as leaving some of the original color showing through. Then I used a rough sanding block to distress it over the large metal pin heads, edges and any areas that I felt were too thick with paint. I used Annie Sloan Old White Chalk Paint and instead of wax I used a sponge brush and sealed it with General Finishes Top Coat Semi-Gloss.

You end up with a pretty rustic, distressed look. This wasn’t complicated or time consuming but the coffee table has a brand new farmhouse look. Each piece of furniture is unique and it’s just a matter of finding the right paint color and technique to transform it into something beautiful!

Love the new look and character of this piece!! Leave a comment below with any questions you may have about using a Chip Brush as well as your thoughts on this technique. I would love to hear from you!

Thanks

Cindy 😊

I love the look of two tone paint on a piece of furniture. So many of the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint colors look amazing together. A friend asked me to paint an entry table that had been her grandmothers. She wanted to update the look of the table and loved the color Versailles but was afraid it matched too closely to the color of her walls. We decided to paint the top and bottom Old White to give a contrast to the wall color, but paint the legs Versailles so she could still have the color she liked on this piece.

This table has lots of pretty lines and those legs! 😍 I couldn’t wait to get those painted!! Sometimes painting a piece two toned can be difficult because there is a lot of taping and touch up but not so with this table. Just a little taping was required. I was happy about that! 😉

Right away I was LOVING these colors together! Add a little distressing and some clear and dark wax and you have an amazing transformation!

I distressed all of the edges and cutouts along this table to add some extra depth and shape.

Such a fun transformation! Do you have a sentimental piece of furniture you want to update? Or maybe you already have? Leave a comment and tell me about it!

And as always thanks for stopping by!

Cindy 😊

I tried out a new product this past week. General Finishes Pearl Effect Champagne Pearl. I purchases a vanity a few months ago and found a chair to go with it and it was time to paint the set and get it ready to sell.

Both pieces got a thorough cleaning and a little fixing. The side drawers on this piece didn’t sit right and there were a few gaps between some of them soooo I used the sticks used to stir paint to even them out. I cut them and glued them to the wood side rails that had been worn down.

Genius right! 😉 I also had to replace a few screws on the back of the side compartment that were not holding the door in place anymore. Time for paint! Can’t go wrong with a pink and white vanity set so I used Annie Sloan Antoinette and Pure White. The chair was already white but had some stains and wear so it got a new coat of paint. Then, to bring the 2 pieces together I painted the accents on the vanity Pure White and the accent on the chair Antoinette.

Now, even though these pieces were not an original set they look like they were made for each other.

There seems to always be surprises when refinishing a piece of furniture. I planned to remove the hardware on the drawers and side cabinet but I would have had to take out the lining to get to the screws in order to remove them. I didn’t want to do that so I painted around them with the paint and the General Finishes Pearl Effects.

Both are easy to clean off if you accidentally touch the hardware. With the Pearl Effects wipe it off while it’s wet but Annie Sloan Chalk Paint will come off easily with a wet rag and a little pressure once it’s dry and then you won’t take the paint off in the areas where you want it to stay. General Finishes Pearl Effect comes in several colors but for this I used Champagne Pearl. It is white with a touch of shimmer giving it the Pearl Effect. I didn’t want to lighten the color of the paint so I watered this General Finishes down by wetting my chip brush before applying it over the Antoinette and Pure White Chalk Paint.

This process is really easy. Just brush it on and wait for it to dry. I then sealed it over the paint with General Finishes Top Coat Semi Gloss. I used 2 coats to finish it. Once it’s dry it has a lovely subtle pearly glossy finish!

AS Antoinette is such a pretty soft pink and I have painted several pieces in this color. It’s beautiful with a wax finish and with the General Finishes over it. I added it to my booth with the other pretty in pink pieces!

The General Finishes products are so easy to use and work so well with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I will be trying out more of their products and posting about them here.

Tell me what you think of my pink and white vanity. Have you used General Finishes before? I would love to hear from you!! 😃

Thanks

Cindy