A Grand Old Boy in Blue

I picked up this Tall boy a couple of weeks ago, and where I had it sitting in my garage you couldn't get the whole thing in the frame. Something I'll need to remember for future shots.

But now its turned into this.

I painted the blue with the chalk paint I talked about in a previous post. It was worth every penny and I've ordered more. My own homemade version will do in a pinch, but the blue painted so beautifully I would slowly like to add more colours to my inventory. It also distresses quite nicely.

 The veneer on the left side was too loose to try and repair so I peeled it off and sanded it down. These poor pieces of furniture are the ones that get forgotten because of things like this, but there is so much more life left in them. The drawers all slide nicely and would hold ALOT.

Half of the hardware was broken or replaced by something that was serviceable but mismatched. So when I found a bunch of matching ones I bought up them up and used a few for the larger bottom drawers.

I think they work well together. 

I sealed the whole thing with another new favourite..beeswax. It just adds something I can't explain to a piece. It brings out such a warmth on the wood that doesn't happen with polyurethane.

This boy is for sale, as are a couple of other things that I will be posting soon.

The lost is FOUND!!

I have this great on-line fabric store that I like to frequent quite often in virtual world and do my shopping.
It's Tonic Living . It's a Canadian Company and I'm thrilled I found them.
Usually when I put my order in, my package shows up in a couple of days. But when my package didn't show up for a week I got a little concerned. I e-mailed them to find that for some strange reason my fabric made a trip to Calgary. So the lovely people there sent me a whole new package of fabric! And it came today!!!

You may remember this little chair.

It went from this, to this

(I apologize for the grainy picture but its one I took.)

This is a Tonic Living fabric.

Now for my new stuff, I'm going to sew up a storm this afternoon and hopefully next week I can show you what became of my little traveling fabric.

Timeless Treasures

                                                        Today I went to visit this girl.

You may know her as the model for Evergreen Living, and I was quite excited when she agreed to meet with me over lunch. I'm hoping she'll agree to an upcoming photo shoot for me. Her agents M&D will look over the contract and let me know in a couple of days if she is willing or not. Cross your fingers for me!!!

While I was also in the area of Waterloo I went to "Timeless Material Co."

They have what seems to be an unlimited amount of resources for anyone wanting to add a unique touch of yesteryears detail to your home. I walked through multi levels of windows, trim, and piles of old tin ceilings. Doors of every shape and size. Entire staircases, fireplace mantels and some of the most interesting hardware, for just about anything.

 Things can be a bit pricey for me, so my purchases were small, but needed and it has been the first place I've been able to find what I need.

I've also want to check out their Southampton location, which I shall save for another day when I'm out and about.

Vanity Fair

A couple of weeks ago I posted this picture of a little vanity.

I've had it for most of the summer sitting in my garage and scanning the internet for inspiration. I had an idea, but anyone who knows me, knows I like to research things. See what products others are using, what works best for them. Then I'll take the plunge and give it a try. Thus it was for this. Chalk paint. Not to be confused with chalkboard paint. This paint comes from the U.K. and is pretty pricy, but I took the plunge and ordered it. This paint boasts of its ability to paint over varnish or an existing paint job with no need to sand or prime and is perfect for painting furniture.
There are two other things you should also know about me, my inability to wait long periods of time and my  cheap side "thriftiness".  I found a recipe to make my own chalk paint. It too painted right over existing varnish with no need to sand beforehand, so for the most part, the paint did exactly what I wanted it to do. I have yet to try my new paint because it arrived halfway through this project so I can't compare yet. But these are the results.

As you can see from some of the pictures it also distresses quite lovely. I also tried a new thing to seal it. Beeswax! I'll let you know how that experiment goes.

By the way, all my after picture will now and forever be done by my lovely daughter, Amelia. 

(or until I let her teach me the proper way to use a camera)

Waiting Patiently

See this little gem...

I've been waiting for it to tell me what it would like to have done to it. I've had a thought or two but I think it finally spoke to me last week. That's a good thing because I have an empty spot waiting to be filled by it.

Some of you may have seen this little baby at the craft show

When asked by many if it was for sale, my reply was no. I'm only 80% happy with it. I had long ago decided that it would make a great display unit for me at the sale, and so it would be my center piece, and definitely be for sale. It wasn't really until the week of the sale that I became disenchanted by it. I needed to figure out what went wrong, but I still needed it for the show.

I will show you that once upon a time it looked like this...

So after some research I figured out the problem and will fix up this little fixer upper.

I'm also glad that my little gem waited to tell me what it was it wanted me to do. I want to make sure that I get this just right and do it proud the first time.

The Beautiful thing about Colour.

Buying local has become the new in. But if you ask me it's really the new old. When I grew up canning and freezing things from your garden was done out of necessity. Getting local fruit from those who had orchards was just the norm. Slowly canning was fazed out as convenience took over our lives. I can go to the store and buy my pickles, but nothing beats the taste that comes from those sitting on my shelf that I spent half a day "putting up". As I sit here and write my salsa is bubbling away and filling the house with a wonderful aroma.
There is also something beautiful about those jars sitting on my shelf. Colour. Nature is a great place to start when thinking about what colour you want to paint, not to mention what colour goes well with it as an accent.

See how everything just works well together. The grey blue colour of the sky and water, the almost black of the tree line. Now for the punch of color we bring in the pinky red of the sunset. Put those together in a room and I promise it will look great together.

Now looking at the colour from this picture and imagine that you've painted your room the white colour of the of the sky. Next you decide that you sofa will be the shade of grey of the road. (Although pavement isn't exactly nature it does work out quite nicely I think)Then a bold move, you add in orange, red and green fabrics for pillows, drapes and accessories. Rearrange the colours and you'll still get a pleasing effect. Green walls, white sofa, orange and red accents. Braver yet, orange walls, red sofa, grey and green accents.

Nature knows what looks best in any season, just look around at the beauty and at the colour palette it provides. And remember paint what you like not what's in vogue, whatever is in will soon be out. Adding the colour that you like will give you the homey, relaxed, take off your shoes feeling every time you walk in the door. 

Summer lovin'

Whoa!

I can't believe that my last post was so long ago. Where has the time gone? This has been one busy summer filled with lots and lots of fun.

One fun thing I have been doing this summer is getting ready for an upcoming craft sale. My dining room is beginning to fill up with completed projects. I'm a little nervous that what I think is fun and wonderful may not be to others. But I am super excited none the less.

I do have one project I can share with you that I did just for me.

Living in an old house comes with some challenges, mostly being, no storage. I'm pretty sure that 2 or 3 changes of clothing was all that was needed a hundred years ago. One special dress and 2 for working. So, who needs a closet right. None of the rooms originally had closets, and before we redid the rooms, you could see where they had a hooks on the wall. So, to add some extra storage for the upstairs we are fortunate to have one very wide hallway.

And sitting in my hallway is a little dresser that I painted to use for storage.

Once upon a time this little art deco waterfall dresser looked like this.

My wee little boy working for me.

Normally I would have sanded it, kept the wood and gave it new life, but in this case the top was riddled with cigarette burns almost through the veneer. No amount of sanding would have removed those without ruining the top, so a light sanding for paint to adhere to was needed. I decided on black paint for the dresser because to me art deco says black.

So we polished these drawer pull ends

And put it all back together and got this

I also put 3 coats of high gloss varnish to give it extra shine, which means extra dusting but I do like the end result.

It has deep drawers which will hold either winter or summer clothes.

I continue my search for more pieces to use in this hallway...maybe something in a red?