Spring Preview

Ok this is just the shortest little post, but I have been shooting pictures all morning. And things are getting way too exciting not to give you guys just the teensiest of sneak peeks. So here you go:

Are you excited yet? I can't wait. See you there. May 5th

More March Madness

March Madness is a big deal in my husband's family. With four brothers and basketball loving parents to boot, you can imagine the ferocious competition that ensues over Tyrell, the traveling trophy (bought at a garage sale along the way somewhere because he was sporting shorty 80's shorts). We all play, even the kids and babies, and the method of children's choices has to be documented so that no one has more than one bracket. It's kind of hilarious actually. And while I like a few weeks of college ball mayhem as well as the next brother,  my own March Madness involved chalk paint, a field trip, and one crazy-ambitious idea.

The day after my parents left, I packed up "A Shift in the Season" and took it to it's new home in Leesburg with my friend Erica. This little day trip had been planned for weeks, as I found out there was an Annie Sloan stockist within 10 minutes of Erica's house. What could be better than delivering my first completed paper collage, buying more paint (the Leesburg stockist carries sample sizes) in all the "crazy" colors, and spending a day shopping in Lucketts, VA with a friend I hardly ever get to see ?

The first stop was Erica's house. This is relevant for two reasons: first, Erica is the proud owner of "A Shift in the Season" and has been waiting for this piece to show up for about a year. So it was an exciting moment for both of us when she tore open the paper covering the long awaited picture. I think we both got a little misty. She loved it. I was completely relieved.

The second reason is that Erica is an artist. In fact, she's the artist that designed my logo for Branches, my barn sale without a barn.

Isn't it the classiest? This is a paper cutting, folks! I love it. I drew her a pencil sketch and this is the beauty she created. Talk about exceeding expectations.

Anyway, I was walking around her house, all blissed out about the picture, and I stumbled on this pretty little thing:

Don't you just love it? The grey band on the bottom is actually a kind of  brushed silver paper. I think the trees were all cut/carved with an exacto knife from the same sheet of black paper. It is completely luminous. You can feel the winter air just brushing your face as you stare at it. I seriously wanted to slip it inside my shirt and smuggle it into my car to sell in the November barn sale. Sadly, I was wearing a fitted t-shirt and would never have gotten past the family room.

Erica has been holding out on me apparently. She has several pieces in the works. I want them all, but she assures me that "my" piece is coming. Actually, paper cutting works like therapy for her. She's a budding novelist and when writing and home schooling and momming and wifing and life all become too much, she heads for her exacto knife. In a good way, of course.

And don't worry, I am ALWAYS asking her to let me sell her stuff. Eventually, I know she will cave. She loved getting paid for the logo. And you can't blame her. There is nothing quite as validating as being paid for something you created.

Anyway, back to our field trip. We left the kids with a sitter and headed for stop #1, On a Whim, a cute little shop made out of an old barn and grain silo painted pink with black polka dots. (Click here for their web site.) I have never seen such an amazing selection of refinished vintage furniture. It was like I had died and gone to heaven. White chalk paint everywhere. Dressers like clouds. Such pretty lines, just the right amount of crackle and distress. Celeste and her other artists are quite the gifted group. And the prices were so reasonable, I thought about buying something refinished, rather than going to the trouble myself. (Which if you know how crafty/cheap I am, is a true testimony of how reasonable these prices were.) Here's a peek of one of the rooms: (see their website for more pics)

I still have no idea why I only took one picture of this amazing store. This is a small room to the right of the main store. The entire interior perimeter is covered with vintage prom dresses in chromatic order. And just as an example of reasonable prices, this solid wood full sized bed frame was $350. No, that is not a typo.

Here's the only other picture I took of this marvelous shop:

I love the finish here. Can't you see this on some chunky wood side table?

Anyway, I left On A Whim with less cash, but with hands full of a happy pair of bags full of Annie Sloan chalk paint and a collection of funny vintage lidded glass bottles that I have big plans for.

Our next destination was a short drive through Leesburg, to the Old Lucketts Store. (see their website here) It's one of Erica's very favorite haunts of  all time. I had come here with her one other time, but we had the kids with us, so it was a bit more distracting.

I really love this place. You just can't believe it's real, if you are a natural born "picker" like me. Ironwork and shutters in the yard.

 A side house full of everything rhinestone. A porch full of bargain priced antiques and vintage pieces.

The main store is in an old house:

See all those windows? They are chock full'o goodies that delight and cause you wallet-based angst. There are 3 floors of glorious shopping. This is the stuff Pottery Barn copies and sells, but it's the real thing here.

Sadly, I had to leave them all there, as I had blown my wad at On A Whim. But there really are some great finds. I yearned over a 60 inch round dark wood table for $69 in the sheds outside and another medium wood table with a carved apron for $88 in one of the upstairs rooms. Oh, and the big carved wood mirror for $135. I almost forgot about that one. I was aching over that one. Great. Stuff. Here.

And if you need design ideas, this is the place. Here is a ceiling treatment from one of the upper rooms. It's painter's cloth:

And displaying things on cake stands and stacked trays. I love it!

Our field trip held one more stop. At the shop across the street, Really Great Finds (Their website is here). I was standing there when I took the picture of the Lucketts Store. I was in front of this staircase to the porch. Now tell me, who could resist a weathered blue metal warthog?

The store was closed, but we couldn't help taking a look around. It was kinda like estate sale meets flea market meets Mexican or Chinese marketplace.

Killer right? Someday I will go in this one. Maybe in May when I hit the Lucketts Store Fair. (Here is the event website. There are even pictures.) I can't wait!!! That's what I am wanting for Mother's Day, the next Saturday off to go play with my girls and meet a few of my favorite bloggers.

As all good things must come to an end, my time with Erica had come to it's close. The school bus was coming and I had a 45 minute drive back to the city ahead of me. But not before I got one last picture of Erica and a chicken in all it's glory:

Why else do we have friends, but to publish pictures of them standing near giant metal chickens?

I almost forgot the most important part! The crazy-ambitious idea. As I was driving home from this lovely outing, I thought about a conversation with another friend who had suggested I do a spring show. I had told her she was nuts....that there was no way I could generate enough stuff by myself to do a spring show. But as I drove away from Erica's, I thought...."hmmm...a spring show....I might be able to swing it...."

So come see what I've whipped up. I actually did it. I'll be ready with plenty of really great stuff.

Branches: the Barn Sale Without a Barn Spring Show - One Day Only!

May 5th from 11am-5pm

The Siren Song of a Colorful Spring

Spring has come early here this year. March is usually dark and depressing and grey. This year, it's been sunny and flowery and warm. So instead of wishing I was somewhere else while staring at my sky blue kitchen ceiling, (which is how I usually get through March,) I decided to do a little something. I invited my mother to come out and take an art class with me.

It was a class in using color in soft pastel taught by Lou Gagnon of Lynn Vale Farms (Here's their site: http://www.lynnvale.com ) in Gainesville, VA. I met him by chance through his wife, Andrea, who makes the most glorious flower bouquets at the Burke Farmer's market.  They had their own barn sale in December, and you know I am a sucker for a day trip, so Alynne and I went out to check it out. This what greeted us:

Pretty place, right? Well it IS a flower farm. How ugly could it be? (You gotta love hydrangeas. They are always lovely)

Here are a few of Lou's pieces, just to give you a feel for what this guy knows about color:

They are completely luminous in person. I was stunned. Here are a few more:

I wanted to add this last one, just to give you some idea how beautiful these pieces are in context. It nevet hurts to have a fabulous, original barn door as a backdrop.

So back to our class. I went with my mom and my friend Sharon. Lou taught us some really useful stuff about color theory and light theory, about blending with colors instead of just black and white. We even got to wear 3D glassed for an exercise on temperature. It was kind of like being at pastel color boot camp. I loved it! Plus he let us use all his pricey European pastels. Gotta love that.

And I got to see my mom as a fellow student and artist. She's much more concerned with doing it "right" than I am. It was fun to have a chance to tease her just a little bit about being a "front row seat" kind of girl. Sharon and I are definately the back row types. But once she relaxed and got into it, Mom impressed me with her sophisticated color combinations and thoughtful comments. Way to go Mom!

Here we all are in that amazing studio:

The same weekend brought other adventures with it. Originally, my mom had planned on coming out alone, but about 3 days before she left, my dad decided he wanted to come too! It was just what the doctor ordered. (No pun intended, Dad.) I had got myself into a situation that could use a little oversight and he was just the man to do it.

I have been refinishing and repairing this beautiful chest of drawers, but it has quite the laundry list of things that need doing. When I got it, it was really musty and needed to be bleached and aired out. The drawers were creaky and the base panels slid in and out at random. The top had old advesive from a mirror that was no longer with us and needed to be stripped. But the biggest problem was the bottom drawer. There was no bottom panel at all. Here's what it looked like the day I got it home.

Pretty, but daunting, right? I did a bunch of it, but with cutting the replacement piece of wood I was stuck.

So my dad helped out. Fortunately, I know a guy with a scroll saw and had the perfect piece of wood already in my shop. My dad made a template, recut the base of the drawer for me, and then helped me reglue the dovetails to strengthen each drawer base. Horrah for dads who know their way around a workshop!

He also helped me frame "A Shift in the Season", which was huge for me. It was a complicated install with very little margin for error. I got nauseous every time I thought about it. He wasn't even nervous. I suppose being a doctor where you are making decisions that affect whether people live or die might thicken your skin a bit. There really is something to working with someone that has complete and total confidence, both in you and themselves. In any case, it turned out beautifully. I would consider it my master work so far, both the piece and the framing job. (If you are so inclined, here's the entry I wrote about the developement and process of this piece)

Here it is in its new home:

And how could I claim "Daddy's Girl" status, if he didn't take me shopping for a bunch of stuff? I have to say, going thrift shopping with your dad is a blast. He found golf shoes and a putter for himself. I found my entire spring line of stuff to refinish for myself. (I promise before and after pics are coming, but that's another post)

In any case, I owe my dad a huge Thank you!!! You are the best!!!

Not Quite Finger Paint

I have been stalking chalk paint bloggers lately. That is substantially less threatening than it sounds. I have just become enamoured with chalk paint, and there are a few people who do it pretty well. I have been watching all their tutorials and reading and subscribing to their blogs. It is really the Washington Post's fault. If it weren't for the Post, I wouldn't even have a clue this stuff existed. And Pinterest. Pinterest is also responsible.

So about a month ago, the Washington Post Home section runs an article about this women who does furniture refinishing out of her home in Arlington, VA.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home-garden/an-arlington-bloggers-home-renovation/2012/01/25/gIQAMxVZzQ_story.html

So I start reading the article and I think, "I need to know this woman." So I read her blog, http://www.blueeggbrownnest.com/  and she has all the furniture she has redone posted and for sale. It's fabulous! Plus she's a cute mom who loves her family as well as being a crafty, thrifty artist in her "spare time". I love her Belgian/French look with its chalky white tones accented with grey and blue. So restrained and elegant. (Not that there is even one room in my house restrained enough for it to work) In the article, it mentioned that she used a special paint, Annie Sloan's chalk paint.

This is where the stalker in me came out. I went where any good visually inclined woman of 40 something would go....Pinterest. Chalk paint everywhere. So I follow the links of my favorites back to their blogs.....after spending a bunch of time drooling over http://www.anniesloan.com/ . I kept finding pics I liked on http://www.freckledlaundry.com/, so I subscribed after watching Jami's cute chalk paint tutorial on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbdF7iY9WWo&noredirect=1 (How did anyone learn anything on their own before YouTube?)

That one led me to the tutorial by Shaunna of Perfectly Imperfect http://www.perfectlyimperfectblog.com/2011/06/chalk-paint-faqs.html . I decided she was one of the cutest people that I don't know in person, so I subscribed to her blog too. Both of these tutorials refer to Miss Mustard Seed's Waxing 101 tutorial, so I headed over there.

Miss Mustard Seed is another one that gets quite a few hits on Pinterest. Here's the link for Waxing 101. http://missmustardseed.com/2011/03/waxes-101/  It really IS fantastic. And my favorite thing about her is that her name is Marian, yes, with an "a".

Somewhere in there, one of the bloggers (sorry ladies, I can't remember who it was) had a "post your chalk paint" contest. I don't know who won on the site, but Janet of The Empty Nest certainly got my vote with this amazing sideboard. http://theemptynest-janet.blogspot.com/2012/02/you-will-either-love-it-or-hate-it.html Her technique used such amazing color combinations! Things I would never have thought of on my own.

As I read and stalked and pinned, I started to realize a few things. These were people like me, home, arty, incapable of not creating stuff and making their worlds prettier. I was like them. They were like me. I could do this. I bought my paint.

I bit the bullet and using some barn sale money bought the Chalk Paint Kit along with 2 more colors from Patty, the highly recommended stockist at Best Furniture Paint in New Jersey.  http://shop.bestfurniturepaint.com/Annie-Sloan-Chalk-Paint-Kit-176.htm . And she is just as wonderful as everyone says. There was a question about what color I had ordered, so 3 hours after I had placed my online order, Patty herself called my house to clarify! That is some serious customer service. And the kit was the best deal I could find anywhere.

You can imagine how hyper excited I was by the time the paint arrived a few days later. It was dreamy. Such saturated colors. As fate would have it, my parents were here, so I had to wait four whole days to use it. But somehow I lived.

You wanna see what you can do with chalk paint?

And yes, it can be a much softer look than this. But you have to cut me some slack. I had to wait four whole days to play with these pretty colors. Did you seriously expect me do something subtle?

I think this may be the most fun product I have EVER used. It is fast, flexible, and really, really pretty. The magic comes from sanding after you wax the paint.

Here's how it works. You start with a piece of something. I used an oak plate.

With Annie's paint, you can just paint right over the wood, finish, everything. So it looks like this:

Then you add another color like this. I beat it up a little with a wet rag right after painting, to give a bit of grit and texture.

This picture is the bottom of the same plate, but you get the idea. Once all that has dried, you can wax it. The first coat of wax is clear and doesn't show up very well on white. Once that dries, you sand the plate. Somehow, the paint and the wax bond and the sanding works more like blending than color removal. Here you can see the difference on the red and blue plate. The first pic is the waxed paint before sanding.

The second is the sanded paint.

See how the wax drags the paint and blends it like an Impressionist painting?

So that's the clear wax. You sand and then add more wax and let it dry over night. Then you can polish it with a soft cloth to make it all shiny.

Now back to the white plate. I sanded, then decided to try the dark wax. You put this over the light wax and sanded paint for an aged finish. Then wipe off the dark wax using a rag and/or a bit more clear wax. The dark wax gets all in the nooks and crannies and really highlights the groves and grain of the wood. It's pretty amazing on oak. See?:

That's with a flash. Here's without:

The real color is somewhere in between. But I love it!

This really was my attempt at a calmer color pairing. I thought for sure I could make something "still" out of white and beige. I think I should probably give up trying to do calm things. Apparently, it just isn't in my nature.

So what we have learned here is 1) following Pinterest posts to their source is a great way to penetrate the Blogosphere, 2) Patty at http://www.bestfurniturepaint.com/ really is as nice as everyone says, and 3) chalk painting is fast and completely addicting. I finished 4 pieces in 2 days from start to finish. And while I am a total spaz and was hyper focused the whole time, that is really fast, even for me. So go get some and give that ugly piece of furniture with pretty lines a makeover.