A Girl Can Change Her Mind!

I fell in love with these chairs while we were shopping at our local Thrifty Store.There was a set of four but two of the chairs were beyond repair. When I say beyond repair, I mean this, once a chair breaks in a certain place, usually in the leg area, you can repair it, but more than likely it will break again.

The two chairs that I say were broken beyond repair looked as if they had been repaired one time too many. I could have taken it home, repaired it and made it look beautiful, but if someone is paying a pretty penny for my furniture I want it to be sound, ya know. I don’t want to have nightmares about someone showing up at my door with this beautifully painted chair in one hand, and its broken leg in another, demanding their money back. So my point, I only took two, ugh…but it killed me. I mean look at the detail on the legs! These were amazing pieces! I debated on getting the whole chair and just salvaging the legs but God made it easy on me…we had no room in the car for four, even three chairs, so two it was.

Now, the sprinkles on my cupcake came when I got to the register! See when there are no tags that means "DEAL TIME" and I knew the young girl at the desk knew nothing about furniture."Would you take $2.50 a piece?” She was very serious about her statement, I on the other hand, nearly pee peed my pants! “$2.50? Hmmmm?” I questioned my finger on my chin. I bent down to look at the chair once again. Hahahahaha! Like, I even had to consider the price again. I looked at Maggie, she winked at me, “Okay, I’ll take it!” Out in the parking lot, I was like a kid on Christmas! Jumping around as we loaded them into the van and I tweeted my purchase over the internet! “Can you believe it? What a great deal!” Maggie just laughed at me, “You’re a goof!”

Because I wanted to put these two chairs in our upcoming show I really didn’t have time to let them “marinate” so I was forced to get them done quickly. Just a side note about me: It drives me crazy when I’m forced to be creative, things never really turn out as planned.

I sat down that night and drafted up these quick drawings of what I thought the chairs might look like. I had this great, rich, chocolate, checkered fabric that I wanted to cover the seats in. I knew I wanted the chairs to have the same colors and patterns, yet be completely different. I knew I wanted the back inlay to have a rich leather faux with a crackle finish. I wanted, I wanted, I wanted, but when it actually came time to doing….the pictures…went out the window. First off, because the purples didn’t match at all! And even though I had color matched the brown to the fabric, for whatever reason it didn’t work either…This is when I start to pout and got really frustrated. So, after a downing half bag of potato chips and walking around the chair a million times, I decided to start with what I DID know.

First, I removed the seats, or what was left of them. They were ancient and needed to totally be replaced with new foam and batting. Second, I primed. Then I started with the faux.

First, I painted my base coat in a tan (Prairie Dust/Olympic) and let it dry. Then with a 1” brush I used a criss cross motion to paint on the Roasted Coffee Beans 2098-20 Benjamin Moore (mixed with a little glaze). While it was still wet I ragged off the glaze mix in random spots, and allowed the tan (base coat) to show through. When that was dry I then applied the one step crackle paint, and with a large brush spread it on randomly over the surface area. In some spots leaving it thicker (which makes larger cracks) and in some spots leaving it thinner (smaller cracks). The tube recommends letting it dry for a couple hours, me I’m impatient, I use a blow dryer and it works just fine. Just remember to move the dryer around. Sometimes when the gel is thick, the air can actually move it and make “waves” in the gel, I tell you this from experience, grrrrrr! When the cracks have appeared and set (dried) take either a dark stain or dark paint on the tip of an old rag and in a circular motion gently work it into the cracks. This brings out the cracks, highlighting them, and giving them an even more aged look.

Next, I played with colors on index cards (LOVE INDEX CARDS) and this was the recipe I came up with, once I decided to change out the fabric. Yes, I decided to change the fabric! For whatever reason the chair was screaming for a cow print! Can you believe it!

I also decided to add in gold metallic. Just another side note on metallic paints. I use artists’ metallic acrylic paints. To me they are more vibrant then regular interior acrylic metallic paints and since I'm working in smaller areas I can afford to use the smaller tubes. I chose the metallic to accent some of the curves to give this piece a bit of a regal appeal and to anchor the whimsy of the prints, it was an interesting combination, don't you trhink?

Well, I was thrilled that these were finished in time for the show and sold almost instantly! They went to two wonderful ladies in two fantastic homes. I love it! And it just goes to show you sometimes things don’t end up how you planned! LOL! Where have you all heard that before!

http://www.skiptomylou.org/category/made-by-you-mondays/