A gift from Craigslist...and a little more stripping

So I did a bit of shopping since last we talked. 

Project Basement De-junk is in full swing. (If you're just joining us, here's the start to this story) After about two seconds of deep soul searching, I decided to boot the kid's Little Tykes Jungle Gym to the back yard. They have used it as a fort almost daily for years, so I wanted a table that could double as a fort with a blanket thrown over it. Suddenly all pedestal tables were out. Hard to fit a bunch of kids under a table with a pedestal taking up all the under table space. And because this is truly a playroom, with people running around and throwing things and shooting Nerf bullets everywhere, round edges are a must, just to reduce the bruise and head bonk factor a bit. Do you have any idea how rare a four legged round table is on Craigslist? 

Fortunately, the Craigslist Gods smiled on me, as they do from time to time,  and I found the perfect table for my basement craft area. There are even two leaves that I can add to make it perfect for the occasional Girl Scout troop activity I found myself volunteering for the other day.

Isn't it amazingly perfect!? I am IN LOVE with the legs. You remember from this post (I think that was the last time I posted about stripping) that I have a thing for sexy legs.

And get this...the table cost $15!! I am totally not making that up. It felt like a gift from On High and probably was. Don't you love it when the Universe decides to show it's support for your home decorating/organizing adventures? And the cute lady I bought it from was super psyched to hear her table was getting a makeover and a new job as a kid's craft table. Win-win!

As you can see, the top is pretty banged up. And it's a little dark for a space full of white and natural wood furniture. So I got my Citristrip on and had at it.

Don't you love a good action photo? DK took this one for me. I am the thing in the back that looks like a clear garbage bag full of rubbish. Well rather, that's my prize winning nasty paint apron. In any case, look how pretty the underlying wood is! Could. You. Die? 

Nothing like a little naked wood grain to get me all worked up. Whew!

OK, Moving on. The naked part is over.

(Funny how you can actually hear the collective Awwww...Man!)

So when we last saw the basement, it looked something like this:

Yesterday it looked like this:

Here's a better shot of the table in it's place.

You can see the debris is way down and I actually vacuumed! Doesn't the table fit the space so nicely? This is with one leaf in. And just for the record, I love playing Rock'em Sock'em Robots with DK.

The table looks kinda weird at this point, but the top still needs to be sealed and have the base painted. Enter Miss Mustard Seed.

I've had my Miss Mustard Seed Hemp Oil since January, I think, and I've been dying to try it. So I pulled it out and rubbed some right on the raw wood. Wow! What a result. It brings out all the depth in the wood and eliminates all the unevenness in the finish. We'll see how it holds up to kids and paint and glue sticks, but if something gets on it, I can always just sand it down and oil it again. No biggie.

Funny story. Harper, my dog,  walked down into the basement between coats and started sniffing the air. I thought it was the residual smell off the stripper that interested her, so I put her on the table. She walked over and started sniffing at the bottle of hemp oil sitting there and wagging her stump of a tail. As I put on the second coat, she watched intently, waiting for me to drop the rag so she could eat it. So funny! I know it's food grade and all, but probably not a great snack for doggies.

I added a total of two coats of hemp oil and let them dry overnight, then I flipped the table upside down and wiped it down pretty well with a few Clorox wipes. It had been in someone's storage area for a long time. 

With all the white furniture down here, I decided to go with a finish similar to my armoire. (I have so much more to post about this armoire, but that's for another day. Sigh.) Due to my time constraints -I need this done preferably by tomorrow- I opted to go with chalk paint, rather than the sleeker look of an Alkyd. Have I posted about the Alkyd paint yet? Sheesh. Too much life and not so much time to blog. Long story short, I opted for Annie Sloan Pure White, mostly because I just bought a can. 

I think chalk paint looks it's best when it's distressed, so I will do just a slight distress, like the corners of the armoire here. 

So table upside down, paint out, nasty painting apron on, and I realize I still need to mask the top of the table. Well lucky me, a few weeks ago the kind people at Scotch Blue sent me another roll of tape to try. I do so love free product to play with.

This is a newer product from their painter's tape line. It's called 2093 EL with Edge Lock. It is a lot tackier going on than the regular scotch blue tape. Here's their page on it for everything you'll ever want to know about it. So far, I like it, but I haven't taken the tape off yet.

Usually I would unscrew the legs to paint a table like this, but the screw body of this particular leg kept unscrewing with the nut, so I decided to be lazy and just paint everything together. I may regret that decision later, but for now, I'm fine. You can see how I taped right up to the frame. I'll let you all know how it turns out. 

BTW, this pic is after one coat of ASCP. I did two more.

This is what my basement currently looks like, just imagine the paint a little denser, as this is after the second coat and I did three:

And I hate to do this to you all, but I 'm gonna leave you hanging until I get it all done for the big reveal. Mean, I know, but it's not done yet. Plus it will give us both something to look forward to.

What have you all been working on lately? I love hearing about your projects.

Talk to you soon,

CM Shaw

Waiting for Milk Paint and the "French" Dresser

I got some exciting mail this week. 

Don't you just love exciting mail? I find tracking packages incredibly exciting. You get to watch them go from state to state and wonder how they made such a giant leap from Glendale CA to Tuscaloosa in one day, and then wonder why the heck they went to Tuscaloosa anyway? 

Maybe it's just me and you guys are all sitting there thinking "Ooookaay..." 

Crazy or no, I really do love the anticipation of packages and letters. 

It makes me giddy just thinking about it. 

But this story doesn't really begin with the package, that's the ending. So let's start with the beginning, at Asher Hill Farms. (This is my friends Margaret and Jeff's place. You can read about it here)

The first time I went to Asher Hill Farms, Margaret took me on a tour of her stash. See the barn here? See the attic? The stash fills that attic. Well, it did until we had the barn sale. Now there's a bit of space. 

Part of the tour was Jeff's workshop. In a corner of the workshop was a stack of bed frames, tables, boxes, tools and a vintage dresser. Margaret points at it and says, "Oh that's my trash pile." 

Trash? All these great old beds and furniture. And the dresser? trash? I nearly had heart failure. 

My face must have dropped because she looks at me and says, "You don't think I'm gonna throw this stuff away do you? I just can't use it, so it needs another home. I never throw anything away. Take anything you want."

Anything I want? Will all of it fit in my car?

Then I remembered I'm married. DK is a wonderful, long suffering man, and one of his major purposes in this life is to keep me from getting in over my head. Big job for the poor man. So I took a deep breath and thought, "What would I actually use?"

My daughter could use a new dresser. Or I could paint and sell a dresser at Lucketts. And I can fit a dresser-emphasis on the singular, ONE- in my studio and still be able to walk...So guess what came home with me?

Nothing.

I know. You're shocked. I'm even shocked. But it was before barn sale season and I knew I wouldn't get to painting it until after the show. So Margaret (or rather, Jeff) just let me leave it where it was until I had the time to deal with it. I highly recommend having friends with a big barn who give you stuff and then store it for you. I need to make them a pie.

So fast forward 7 months. I have been to Haven at this point and fiddled with milk paint and white wax. Miss Mustard Seed released a new color, Lavender, with this astonishingly beautiful piece.

Here's the link to the whole post, or just click on the image.

I needed to make something like this! But there was no budget for more paint. Boo. 

So I waited. 

I kept reading Instagram posts from Front Porch Mercantile about milk painting and using hemp oil and white wax and got more and more jealous. Wendy runs the cutest shop in New Brunswick, Canada and is always posting pictures of the fantastic classes she's teaching that I am too far away to take. 

And then there's Finding Silver Pennies. Have you guys discovered this amazing blog yet? Danielle is my hero. The things this girl can do with paint. You need to see the heavily distressed milk painted dressers she did in Feb here. To.Die.For.

But I am wandering...Back to our riveting story and my quest for milk paint.

I even tried to get the paint for my birthday. I sent DK links to all the colors and products I wanted from online vendors and talked about it with my kids a bunch. I got everything else I asked for, including a gift card for the lumber to make the second 2x4 planting box I've wanted to build for a year, but no paint. Then one day, the clouds parted.

Shaunna West, author of the Perfectly Imperfect blog and owner of a fabulous shop by the same name, announced a sale one all her MMS milk paint products. And she had those cute little electric hand blenders I had seen, but always were immediately sold out. So I finally ponied up and bought the paint. And the hand mixer.

Isn't that just happiness on a tray?

With the paint on it's way, I figured I better go get the dresser.

The thing about this dresser is, it has great lines for this project, but a lot of it is laminate. At least it's old laminate, so I think I can sand it and give it some tooth, but I'm a bit leery about it. There will definitely be priming and sanding and bonding agent used. And I'll keep you guys posted. Then you'll have the inside scoop about whether or not you can paint laminate successfully. And don't worry. I'll tell you if it scratches right off. Either that, or you'll just hear me yelling in my garage.

I have to say though, as I clean this piece, (and it needed a lot of cleaning) I am falling more and more in love with the lines. I love the curvy top...

 And the delicate hardware. I will be replacing the mismatched top knobs with crystal ones. And painting the existing pulls to match the new look.

I love the detailed base and the carved feet. So much room for embellishment here.

And this little ornament on the bottom! So cute!

Yeah, this dresser still has a long way to go, but I can see it in my head. Repair the runners, fill the larger scratches, sand the tar out of everything. Prime it with a stain proof primer that sticks to anything. Bonding agent infused Lavender milk paint (mixed with my darling hand mixer, of course! I can't wait to use that thing) spread liberally everywhere and accented with Pure White ASCP vine style designs and glazed areas. It's gonna be awesome. At least, I hope it will...

What are you guys working on this week? 

Did you get any exciting mail? 

Do you laugh maniacally when tracking your packages? 

Leave me a comment and tell me your story.

Talk to you soon,

CM Shaw

PS. If I haven't talked long enough, and you want to see more of my exciting daily adventures, you can follow me on Instagram @cmshawstudios . I post awesome things there, like smiley faces in the left-over gravy. Cuz everyone needs a little happy gravy, right?

Adventures with Milk Paint

Back in December, I had the opportunity to hang out with Marian Parsons, aka Miss Mustard Seed. I highly recommend this, as she is a total delight. (Did I tell you guys that she came to see my booth at Luckett's? I was delirious with excitement!)

In between book signings, I got her talking about milk paint and how it was different than chalk paint.

 Thanks Janet, for letting me "borrow" your photo from here.

After our conversation, I was super curious to see what it did in person, so I bought some. One sample packet of Flow Blue (Prussian Blue), a packet of Kitchen Scale (Blue green), a packet of Ironstone (creamy white), and a bottle of the bonding agent, just for good measure.

Fast forward to March 2013. I was digging around the studio, looking for a solution to some finish based problem and remembered that I had never even tried my MMS milk paint. I found it and decided to go with the Flow Blue. I was super glad I had seen a demo on what to expect the texture to be at the book signing, because milk paint, when mixed, looks like you did something wrong.

This was what the demo looked like. 

from The Empty Nest

This is what mine looked like:

 

That is a combination of Flow Blue, Kitchen Scale, and I think I added just the smallest hint of Ironstone for good measure. It made a grainy, runny mix. But I knew what to expect, so I just went with it. I had already started chalk painting a wooden box with Pure White ASCP, so I decided that would be an excellent thing to start with. I slapped a coat of the milk paint on, and then blow dried it, simply because I was feeling impatient. 

 

Well joy of joys when the crackling and bucking and flaking started!

 

Well, that's the finished product at any rate. 

Here's a better picture of the kind of flaking I'm talking about:

 

There, you can see it better. The paint literally peels off by itself.

And the more "finished' an item is, the more the paint will flake and chip. And there is no way to know where your flaking and chipping will occur. You can hedge your bet by sanding a bit, but even then, things might still chip or buckle, ... or not.

 I purposely painted another wooden box I knew had been sealed, just so I could see how much peeling I got. Almost all of the paint peeled of in big flakes. It take about 1/2 hour to fully peel and buckle if you just leave it in the air. I used a paintbrush and gently rubbed off the flakes, then took stock of what I wanted to do. It was way too much peeling for the look I was going for, so I sanded with a 320 grit sand paper in a few spots where I wanted more adhesion and then added more paint. it peeled some more, but I was pretty happy with what adhered, so I stopped there.

The blue shadows are where the milk paint bonded. The green and red are ASCP chalk paint glazes I did in Antibes Green and Emperor's Silk after milk painting. Here's another angle:

You can see how much of the blue peeled off. I completely covered everything twice. What's left is what stuck. I was going for a very worn look, so that was fine with me.

The great thing about milk paint is that you can just keep layering it on until you get the look you want. The grit is part of the look. It gives a very primitive look, so if you love Shaker and American Primitive, you will adore what this product can do. And I was very pleased with the results I got from blow drying stuff. It seemed to encourage cracking and lumping. Which is what I wanted.
 

If you are looking for a super smooth finish, just know that you can get that, but you will need to use the bonding agent and be ready to sand and re-coat a few times. Wax also helps.

When I had each of these projects painted the way I wanted, I used a paste wax to seal them. I am pretty sure I used Annie Sloan wax, but I may have used a little of another brand I have. I think I also waxed the blue milk paint coat of the red box before I put on the chalk paint glazes. Then, after glazing, I clear waxed and dark waxed the whole thing again. The blue box and white frame were both clear waxed and dark waxed after milk painting.

I highly recommend dark waxing if you want the cracks and flaws of the paint to show through. it completely brings the piece to life.

So here's a summary of my experience dabbling in milk paint vs chalk paint:

1. Chalk paint sticks to almost anything. Milk paint needs quite a bit of tooth to stick. That is the point of both of them. They are total opposites in this regard. So if you are going for a really opaque look, or a painting on a slick surface and want good adhesion, go with chalk paint. If you want chipping and peeling and aging, go with milk paint. It gives a great rustic, aged finish.

2. Chalk paint and milk paint can be used to excellent effect as layers on each other. It doesn't matter which is first, it just depends on what you are trying to accomplish. I used chalk paint as a base layer under milk paint on the blue box and got no peeling, but plenty of cracking and buckling. I used chalk paint as a glaze over the milk paint and loved the way the lumps and peels showed through. If you wanted to do some decorative painting, but wanted a rustic base, you'd use milk paint for the base, the chalk paint for the design. It would be lovely. Miss Mustard seed does this often.

  Here's the piece she used to announce Kitchen Scale

3. Don't stress that your milk paint looks lumpy. MMS uses a hand blender to mix hers a little smoother. But just apply it. If it's too runny, add more powder until you are more comfortable with it, but think "water color" not "latex" in your thickness expectations. Here's her tutorial for mixing paint.

4. Wax is your friend with both milk paint and chalk paint. Just like it does with chalk paint, wax brightens the color and transforms milk paint. In that sense, milk paint and chalk paint are alike.

5. Both chalk paint and milk paint are very forgiving, so just relax. Find something you won't cry about not turning out to practice on. It's just a matter of experimenting until you get the feel for it. Start with a frame or a piece of wood or a small wooden box, or that 80's country plaque your mother snuck into your collage stuff because she was desperate to be rid of it. If you hate how it turns out, keep in mind, you can ALWAYS chalk paint over anything.

 
 Just for fun, here's a look at my all time favorite milk painted piece ever. It's the piece Miss Mustard Seed used to introduce the black color of her milk paint line, Typewriter. I saw it in person at her space in Lucketts  and didn't buy it. I am still amazed at the self control that took.

So there you go. My thoughts about milk paint. I was actually impressed with it once I started fiddling with it. And I didn't think I would be. So go give it a try and tell me what you think.

A Few Little Claims to Fame and More Stuff for Lucketts

Sorry I missed last week. It has been a bit crazy around here. But I'm here today. And I have a few exciting tidbits to share.

Let's start with Thistlewood farms. You guys remember. This is the site that inspired this post about my messy house (here) where I shameless threw back the covers and showed my own disorder to the world. It's the site where Karianne's perfect, perfect pantry caused me to wail in despair of ever having even one place in my house be that organized and clean.

Well, exciting things happened. 

She asked for readers to suggest a name for her online shopping posts (my  suggestion is in the comments here)....and she chose MINE!!! Read all about her wonderful sponsors, etc here. She mentions me way at the bottom. So go show her some love and check out the cool stuff she's gathered for you guys. You can tell her Marian sent you, if you want. But you might have to clarify that I'm not Miss Mustard Seed. She's a way more famous Marian. It wouldn't be the first time we've been confused with each other.

My other bit of fame comes from the Old Luckett's Store blog. Branches: the Barn Sale Without a Barn was a featured vendor on their blog yesterday! Yay famous! Woot. Check it out here. We are the third vendor mentioned. That was super exciting to discover.

So I bet you've all been wondering what's been keeping me too busy to post. Well, that would be book lamps, garage sales, and collages. Great stuff, right? The garage sale gods have been super kind to me the last couple of weeks. I found some incredible things. Like this huge, vintage wooden trunk.

and some amazing old forged iron serving pieces

and this cool silver plate tray. Can you see the bunches of tiny grapes all around the edge? 

Who wouldn't want a silver tray with tiny grape clusters?

I almost had heart failure when I saw an entire table covered in vintage and antique copper pieces. I only had enough money with me for a fraction of what they had. Could you die?

And the vintage and antique spoons. You know you have to have at least one of these.

I especially like the happy meal book on the floor behind them.  We keep it pretty real at my place. 

Here's a little peak at what Sharon from Hand Picked Art is bring to our booth at the show:

Isn't it funny how different our taste is, even though we hang out all the time? That's why it's good to have a partner, folks. Then there's something for everyone. 

In the studio, I have been super busy making collages and refinishing frames like this one with vintage stamps and 100 % linen backing

And this

And this. 

 DK shot the picture for me because I love dandelions. I'm having a really hard time putting it in the show. I LOVE how the chalkboard frame turned out. You guys would forgive me if I kept it, right? You 'll just have to come to Lucketts to see what I decided.

Here's a closer shot of the frame.

As far as the book lamps go, they are all drilled and bolted together, but are still a work in progress. I will have them looking amazing for the show. Please pardon the mess. Neither one has any lamp parts attached yet. The picture with the shade and the big pipe sticking out is just to show you where they are going. 

 These detail shots are the two different ways I attached the casters to the book stacks. One goes all the way through the bottom book. I had to reinforce that stack with a board hidden inside the book. The other style caster is screwed into the base book's cover.

I have a couple more pieces I am working for this show, a box and another collage, of sorts. Neither is finished, but here's a peek:

This is that piece from 1888 that I found. Please pray that the conservation glass I ordered from California gets here in time for me to pull this one together for the show. I suppose I could have used regular glass, but if something has made to to me from 1888, I certainly am not going to be the one to let it get ruined. UV glass or bust baby!

This was an experiment with MMS milk paint. I love how it chips and cracks. I'll take better photos and tell you all about this project later. But the lining will be woven strips of book page. (A Tom Clancy novel, if you must know.) You can see how I've done it on the bottom already.

So that's where things stand for now. Thanks for hanging with me. 

I always miss you guys when I don't post.

Don't forget to come to the show. I'll be there all day Saturday.

Here's the link for directions etc.

The Lucketts Spring Market

MAY 18-19, 10-5 both days

$7 at the gate

The fields behind the Old Luckett's Store

42350 Lucketts Road  Leesburg, VA