The Far Fifty: 2010

Flower Bed(ding)

Some of you may remember from last month I posted about a dresser I was going to do for a friend. She wanted it to match the bedding for her little girl's bedroom. Everyone gave lots of great advice on how I should go about painting the dresser inspired by this bedding:

I gave her two different sketches for her to pick from. She picked option B.

Here's what the dresser looked like when I brought it home. Definitely not pretty enough for a little girls room. I took off the hardware, filled in the holes, sanded, primed and painted.

I drew the flowers out on paper and then arranged them on the dresser to make sure I had the scale right.

When I thought it looked good I traced them onto the dresser. After that I just got to work mixing colours with my acrylic paints and painting in the flowers. I tried my best to match the colours exactly to bedding.

I love the way it turned out! I'm bringing it back to her this weekend, I can't wait for her to see it. I hope she loves it!

These ladies really know how to party!

White Waterfall

I saw this dresser at Goodwill and thought the shape was so sweet but it needed a makeover.

It's in such good shape that all it needed was a quick sand before priming and painting. After it was all painted, I wanted to add something to the front like I usually do. But I couldn't decide what to do. I knew this was a girls dresser so I thought of birds or butterflies or flowers but nothing seemed right. I don't think the front of the dresser is the right shape for a painting on the front.

So instead, for some uniqueness, I added a pretty pink damask paper to the insides of the drawers and painted little numbers on the back of the drawers.

This is my first project without my sprayer in a looooong time. To be honest, it was a bit of a struggle for me. The sprayer has spoiled me; it's so quick, it only needs one coat and it's dry in half an hour. I'll definitely have to get used to painting with a brush and a roller again.

Linking with:
Piece of Work Wednesday at Primitive & Proper

Pardon my French.....Provincial

I picked up this dresser on Kijiji for $20. It was originally listed as free one day and then it disappeared. The next day it showed up again for "best offer". I offered $20 and even though they had another offer of $25 they sold it to me since I could pick it up immediately. Yay!

I forgot to take a true before pic, this is after I removed the hardware and sanding. But you know this dresser, the basic off white with a gold line around the drawer fronts.

This was finally the dresser that I went a little bold on. I picked out Para's "Rescue Me" which is a nice, bright aqua. This is the first time I paid full price for a can of paint. It was hard, I'm not gonna lie! I've never worked with Para before but I really liked it. And I swear this paint smelled like Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, it was the weirdest thing!

I primed and painted the hardware with a dark pewter. I wanted to reuse the hardware since I felt nothing else would look right on this style of dresser. Plus, since I paid full price for the paint, costs were getting high on this piece.

I love how it turned out so I'm still deciding on whether or not to keep it for J's room. It's just so cute, there might be a room makeover post in the near future!

Stopping by these awesome parties:

Nightstand Revisited

I did this nightstand last month and it has been for sale for about three weeks with absolutely zero interest. So I took a step back and looked at it.

I decided it was nice but fairly boring. Actually super boring. So I whipped out my Amy Butler paper pack that I used on these nightstands.

I had multiple people interested in these nightstands when I posted them so I don't know why I didn't use the Amy Butler paper on this one right away.

I chose a new paper for the drawer front and a coordinating piece to line the inside. I hadn't lined the drawer previously because I didn't have any paper to match the striped piece I used on the front.

Much better! I like how the knobs blend into the flowers on the paper. Let's hope this does the trick!

Joining Piece of Work Wednesday at Primitive & Proper

Maps & Mod Podge

This is a quick and easy project for anyone looking for some personalized coasters. I bought this pack of 6 coasters at Goodwill for $1.00 (50% off day, of course!). Even though the colours actually went well with my family room I wasn't really into the leaping antelopes.

I whipped out the Mod Podge and my atlas that I also bought at Goodwill for $2. I ALWAYS see atlases at thrift stores for anyone looking to do something similar.

After the mod podge dried, I applied a couple coats of polycrylic to the tops for extra protection.

I used pages of Canada for my project but I think this would be a great project to do with special places you've visited.

I bought a magnet set at Anthropologie that is very similar to these. Which one do you think I spent more money on?

Linking with:
Thrift Share Monday at Apron Thrift Girl

Free Side Table

I picked up this side table for free at my local dump.

The top and sides had some water damage and the finish was peeling and flaking in spots. I used some stripper I had left over from a previous project to get the rest of the finish off.

My sander seriously got a workout with this one. But I was left with a beautiful oak top.

I left the top but painted the rest of table off white (what else is new?). I really wanted to use some stain I had on hand to complete this table and make it truly "free" but I only had a reddish stain and an ebony stain. The colour of the wood looked so great with the paint that I had to go and get some clear stain to finish this project. I ended up with Minwax Honey Pine, bought from the Mistint Motherload for $3.49. There's also a bunch of stains there that have been discontinued.