The Look of Vintage Christmas with Chalk Paint

An easy and inexpensive Christmas craft project even kids can help with

Sneak Preview: Chalk Paint Ornaments

My church holds an annual Christmas bazaar that is kind of a big deal.  All year long, scores of church members make hand-crafted gifts and decorations to be gathered and sold on a single day.  Everything is lovely, creative, and crafted with love.

As for Granny?  Well, I was asked to refurbish a motley collection of thrift store and garage sale finds -- in other words, MY SPECIALTY -- into attractive gifts.  Using chalk paint, of course.  To see the full transformation, click here, but let me give you a little sneak preview of what I had to work with:

Meet  "The Befores"







If I may be permitted to brag just a little, I think I did a pretty nice job of turning this motley group of misfit tchotchkes into a cohesive Christmas collection.  No, really, I mean it!  But like I said, if you want to see more, click here.

While I was working on the above sundry, I had a great idea for making the collection more Christmas-themed:  hand-painted ornaments using the same Annie Sloan chalk paint colors as my refurbished items.  Arles, Antibes Green, Duck Egg Blue, Primer Red, and Aubusson Blue are the colors of my Christmas rainbow.

I started with a dozen or so paper mache forms I purchased for about a dollar apiece from a local craft store.

I chalk painted each ornament a different color, and then lightly brushed over the molded edges with a contrasting color or two.  (The sloppier, the better.  For this project, smudges and spots only add more beauty!)  Once all the paint was dry, I gave the ornaments an aged appearance by brushing on, then immediately wiping off, a 75/25 mixture of clear and dark wax.

I finished by "burnishing" the edges with a gold Sharpie marker.

This was some ridiculously fun and easy stuff, folks, but the results were spectacular!

I went one further step with the ornaments shaped like Christmas trees by adding colorful detail using...

...you're not going to believe this, but it's true...

... ordinary Crayola crayons!

And then I embellished each little crayon "ornament" with a gold Sharpie marker dot. 

Beautiful! 

Chalk paint and stencil makeover

Functional, good quality, but nothing exciting.  This fine little chest really needed a makeover -- something to make it stand out.

 I started by painting it with Annie Sloan chalk paint in Napoleon Blue.  But it wanted something more...

I found some cute stencils in a bird and branch motif by Martha Stewart at the craft store.  I used the stencils as the basis for a tree branch design, painted with Annie Sloan in Coco and Olive.

I also went free-style with some of the branch design.

Chalk paint provided even more interest:  Primer Red berries dotted here and there, and a little bird in mottled Provence teal and Olive, perched jauntily on the main branch.

I also used a brown Sharpie marker to give the branches the appearance of wood grain with random squiggles and swirls.

To give the piece a rich patina, I applied dark wax.  I like to thin the wax with some mineral spirits, in about a 1:1 ratio, to the consistency of a thick soup.  Then I apply the wax with a natural bristle brush...

and buff off the excess wax with a soft rag.

Before dark wax and after.  Quite a difference, don't you think?

Finally a coat of clear wax, some new hardware, and my little chest is a stunner.

Telephone Bench Makeover

The antique store wanted $40 for it:  a heavy, well-built oak telephone bench with turned legs and a small storage compartment.  It had some nice detailed carving, too.

But the finish was pretty rough and scarred, so I haggled a little, and for $35 it was mine.  That's a bit more than I like to spend on a makeover piece, but I had a good feeling about this one.

Home to my basement studio it went, and I immediately painted it all over with Annie Sloan chalk paint in Pure White.

To make the carved detail stand out, I applied a coat of Paris Grey.  Then I used a bit of Duck Egg Blue to further bring out the carved medallions within the detail.

After the paint was thoroughly dry, I thinned down a dollop of Annie Sloan Dark Wax with some mineral spirits until it was the consistency of chocolate syrup, and I applied it to the piece using a natural-bristle paintbrush.

I brushed on wax in small sections and immediately buffed it off using an old cloth diaper.  Finally I applied a thin coat of clear wax.

And here you have the finished piece in all its made-over glory:

And now it looks like this....

Experiments with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Primer Red and Napoleonic Blue

Picture a well-built, but outdated and banged up child's table and chair set.  A relic from the 1990's in honey oak with a wood-look formica top and a generous sprinkling of scratches, paint stains, and probably boogers... yep, that was in my house.  The thing is, a generation of children played, ate and created at that little table, and a new generation has begun to do it all again.  It was worth some TLC.

I wanted something cheery and kid-friendly, but not overly bright.  I decided to give Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Primer Red and Napoleonic Blue a try.  I painted the chair and the sides and legs of the table in Primer Red.  Then I enhanced the spindles of the chair and some of the carved details with the Napoleonic Blue and finished with clear wax.

Rather than paint over the formica top, I taped off the edges with 3M painter's tape and spray-painted the inside with chalkboard paint.  Finally I stenciled a little lettering detail at one edge and used a black Sharpie pen to outline the letters.

And now it looks like this.  A new generation is using this furniture to play, eat and create.  It is pretty and durable -- I scrub it off daily, and all the surfaces have held up just fine.

Next I picked up a little coffee grinder at my favorite thrift store for about five bucks.

First I gave it a first coat of Primer Red...

(Spoiler alert:  Future ugly thrift store makeovers pictured!)

After the red was completely dry, I used a tiny amount of Napoleonic Blue to enhance the details.  To do this, I used a cheap, natural-bristle paint brush and just a dot of the blue paint on a paper plate.  I swished the dry brush through the paint until the brush was just barely tinged at the edge.

Then I slapped it over the corners, ridges and knobs.  And also very lightly across the flat surfaces.

I finished with a coat of dark wax.  

And now it looks like this.

Come see this post where I party:
Twirl and Take a Bow

And now it looks like this....

Experiments with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Paris Grey and Coco

Unfortunately I have no "before" pictures of two items I bought at my favorite thrift store for under $5 each.  The clock used to be dark-stained wood with a heavy, glossy varnish and a shiny brass frame around the face.  The photo carousel had a boring, homogeneous, mid-tone teak-looking finish.  Chunky, clunky, awkward and ugly, both.  But I did like the carved grapevine detail on the front of the clock; there seemed to be some possibility there.  As for the carousel, I liked nothing whatsoever about it.  I almost left it behind, but something about its practicality grabbed me.  Under the lid is a little compartment for storing... more photos?  Who knows, but I'm a sucker for any kind of hidden storage.  So I decided to see if chalk paint could fix even this much ugliness!

For the carousel, I decided to try Annie Sloan chalk paint in Paris Grey, just one coat.  Then I distressed it heavily, and I finished it off with a coat of dark wax.  I actually like the little thing now.  I'm thinking about using it to display some flowering window box photos I shot in Germany last October.  (Who am I kidding?  It's gonna be pictures of the grandkids!)

I also tried painting the clock with the ASCP Paris Grey, but for some reason I wasn't as pleased with the result.  Next I tried giving it a light over-wash with some watered down ASCP in Coco, then lightly distressed the edges and the carvings.

Still it just didn't do it for me.  The brassy framing around the face still looked shiny and fake to me.  And the grapevine carving just didn't pop the way I wanted it to.

I tried to come up with a solution -- maybe a darker wash of Graphite over the carvings?  Try another color altogether?

And then it came to me:  THE WAX, STUPID!

 I brushed on a coat of dark wax, wiped off the excess with a clean cloth diaper and buffed the piece all over with a shoe shining brush I stole from GrandDad Fabuloso.  (He'll never miss it!)

For the record, if you get wax on glass or mirror, scrub it off without delay.  Like, right that second.  That may sound like a no-brainer, but some of us just have to learn things the hard way.

And now it looks like this:

And now it looks like this

Dresser Re-do with ASCP in Cream

I'd been following a lot of posts on Pinterest about painting furniture with Annie Sloan chalk paint, and I decided to try it out.  I had a ratty old dresser in my basement that was starting to get all mildew-y, and I had already decided to just throw it out, but then I thought, "Hey, why not try painting this beast?  If it doesn't work out, no loss...."