Paint Inspiration: Secretary Desks

Looking for some unique painted secretary desks to 

inspire your next project of the XL size?

Just in time for Easter and Spring~

Crackled doors in cream, a pink and black harlequin

pattern on the lower doors, rubbed white legs and pediment

with touches of gilding~and don't forget the rabbit head!

This might be easier to pull off~

looks like a custom mix of Provence, Florence and

 Pure WhiteChalk Paint® finished with clear

 and dark wax.  I love the look of this fresh color 

on a traditional piece, don't you?

For those that have artist skill a takeoff

on a Gramercy wallpaper motif gets translated

onto a faded out aqua background.  I would consider

doing a hand painted vine and then adding flowers and birds

using Transfer Gel by Artisan Enhancements or decoupage.

Lately I have fallen in love with the look of 

this antique green.  We used Olive Chalk Paint®

to achieve a very similar color and finished it with Gilder Paste

 in African Bronze, which has a greenish gold cast.

After my trip to Colorado for an artist retreat

I played with the Venetian inspired painted 

finishes using lots of color and metallic.

If I were to capture these colors I would start with 

Cream and Versailles and tweak them to make them a 

little bit stronger.  Old Ochre as the base, clear and dark wax

with Gilding Wax or Gilders Paste to finish it off. 

I am working on a massive armoire and am always

in search of inspiration in the paint department!

So far I have finished two coats of French Linen,

but that is only the beginning. Hopefully I get a chance 

to work on this piece during the week and 

I will be back with updates on how it is taking shape.

Sources: These images are from my Pinterest page~

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A random sampling

 Well mostly my life revolves around the shop these days~

painting furniture, ordering inventory, ringing sales, talking to people

about Chalk Paint®, and trying to just keep up.

 The latest offerings in furniture are this Empire dresser~

 A Hepplewhite chest on chest dresser~

 This Gothic dresser~

 The other thing I have been doing every Sunday is teaching my sell out workshops for Annie Sloan enthusiasts.  Its a four hour class and I teach 11 women~it takes a lot of prep work and I am happy to have Colin setting me up for the class. He goes to get the lumber for the samples and does all the wood cutting and the layout of the supplies for the class on Saturday after we close in the afternoon. Much like setting a table~he gets it done!  I just have to make the dinner!! 

 After class I ring up the sales~most people wait to

 take a class to decide what they want to buy and which colors they plan to use. 

 The week before I told you all I was in Colorado at my fellow Stockist pal Robyn Story's vacation home. 

What a blast I had sneaking away from my shop duties!! Here is a few snippets of what went down~

 Robyn sent all the supplies ahead~holy moly! We planned to do our work in the kitchen and laid everything out for an impressive looking photo!! Who wouldn't want to jump right in and start creating? We had no rules~we would be led by our creative intuitions.  Robyn and I were joined by another stockist Stepahnie Kahrs Granit.  It was a 5 day submersion into the creative part of our minds...no stores to watch, only paint and play time. 

Robyn's kitchen got some protective coverings before we began~good thing too as

the paint and product was flying!

We went from the kitchen table over to the island and back again~

most days beginning right after coffee and a bagel until 11 pm!

It was so interesting to see what the others were working on~sometimes one of us

would say "thats not looking so hot" and it would end up being one of our favorite samples!

So that in and of itself was a learning moment...

just keep on working a piece until you LOVE it!

 

 The kitchen table looked like this at the end of every night.

Totally busted up with rags and dirty brushes and pots and bowls of all kinds of stuff.

We had little pots of gilder paste opened besides 

bowls of clear and dark wax~you name it, we had it opened!

We were creating masterpieces!!!

 Step one and step two and step three~we kept photo journaling it 

to try to remember the genius of our ways!

Of course we managed one night out on the Colorado town~

 When we were finished we had some real beauties~this one was Stephanies~

We used Artisan Enhancements Transfer Gel and Crackle Tex along with Gilder Paste on top of Chalk Paint® to create these pretty boards with Robyn's exclusive fine arts images that she owns the rights to.

I will be tailoring a course soon at Maison Decor based on our Colorado Creative trip and it will based upon many of the techniques and results we got while in Colorado. Stay tuned!

We made some beautiful browns with Chalk Paint®  and then gilded the lily on some with Gilder Paste (bottom) and even some Pearl Plaster (top left).

The next thing on the docket coming up soon will be the Annie Sloan convention for Stockist in New Orleans! Justin and I will be headed there for the first week of April. Stores might be closed for a few days, but this trip is a highly anticipated event and I cannot wait to see Annie again and introduce her to Justin.

I will get to see all of my friends that I have made through this past year~its going to be fantastic. We take seminars on subjects and attend talks by Annie, and they always have surprises in store for us too.

For more information and how to purchase Artisan Enhancements

visit our online store here. I will be creating some pieces of furniture in 

the shop before I go away. They will have the Colorado Creative collaborative 

methods we used and I look forward to seeing what you guys think!

Workshop Information

Furniture Information

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Gothic Dresser in fabulous Olive Chalk Paint®!

 This fantastic old dresser with Gothic lines was painted

 in Olive Chalk Paint®.

 We wanted to use a bold color on this piece because 

it was so beefy and had great lines and details.  

 Action shots from our shop showing the first coat of Olive hitting the drawers.

 Take your drawers out of the dresser to paint them for the best results.

Paint only where the original finish was applied. Don't paint all along the sides of drawers or you will have sticking issues.

It will all get the standard two coats of Chalk Paint.

Justin in painting mode~you can see the top of the dresser here and our little box of Elmers wood filler.  If you have any deep gouges or ripped off veneer you can fill it in with this filler.  After that was done we planned to use the Rustic Technique to create a leathered weathered texture on the top surface.

 The top was done by my son Colin using the Rustic technique.  He did a fantastic job on it! If you have a piece with a surface that has "issues" like our piece~consider using the Rustic technique to your advantage. We teach this technique in our Annie Sloan Introductory course at Maison Decor. This old piece had veneer missing and a less than stellar surface on the top of the dresser as you could see above~the Rustic technique worked beautifully on this piece.

 All the details  like the chunky leg and the 
decorative trim are highlighted when you apply dark wax.

The leg without dark wax to enhance it~

see what a difference dark wax makes?

 Plenty of dark wax was used around the drawer details~and we revived the old 

hardware with Bronze Gilder Paste. You might use antique gold or silver if that is your preference.  I used some silver on hardware for a graphite dresser yesterday and it looked amazing with the dark background!

 You will see that later~

 A moody finish was created with the dark wax~

I could have used even more!

To finish up the dresser, all the drawers were lined with a timepiece motif decorative wrapping paper.  You can use these pretty papers to line old dresser drawers when they don't look so pretty inside. If your drawers have that funky smell you need to take them out and completely seal them with Zinssers clear shellac.  These drawers were fine, but they had stains inside.  You could paint the insides of the drawers, but since ours only had some discoloration on the bottoms, we chose to line them.

Each row of drawers has different hardware pulls which 

makes for a cool look.  They came that way from auction, and 

the hardware is all antique, so its hard to think it is not original.

Step outside your comfort zone and try a bold color on

a big piece with details and then apply your dark wax (after the clear of course) with a liberal hand! Buff it all up and step back and admire your creation!

This piece is being added to our online shop but is for local pickup

or you can arrange for your own shipping. 

But be forewarned~it weighs a ton...

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