Aged Silver Finish

I want to show you how I created an aged silver finish for my cane back chairs that I refinished.

Here’s what the finish looks like up close:

To achieve this look, I first painted the chairs with some left-over Behr Premium Plus Ultra (paint and primer in one) in Gulf Winds that I had from another project.

If you want to know how to replace cane webbing, I tell you how to get started and then Miss Mustard Seed did my feature on how to replace cane webbing.

When I glaze a piece of furniture, I like to use a brush for the paint, instead of spray paint. That goes doubly for a piece that doesn’t have a lot of details. By using a brush, your brush strokes become areas for the glaze to sink into, and you end up with a more natural looking glazed finish.

Since I wanted the chairs to be silver, I had to use spray paint. That’s okay, though, because the spray paint over the brushed primer coat is still going to give me the definition I want.

I used Krylon’s Metallic Brilliant Silver for the chairs. I like how my reflection shows in the lid. Awesome.

I sprayed several light coats on the chairs, which gave them a nice, shiny finish. It’s hard to get the sheen with my camera, but they really are more silver than gray, as they look here.

 

Next, I used my Valspar Antiquing Glaze.

On the first chair, I slathered it on and wiped it back off.

It took several layers of doing this to get the look I wanted.

At first, it looked like this:

I didn’t really care for the look. I brushed out the areas, rubbed more on, wiped more off, until I got the look I liked.

Since I was doing the post for Miss Mustard Seed, I wanted a before and after shot of the chairs, so I worked quickly to get one chair completed. I then got sidetracked by my foot surgery, so it was awhile before I worked on chair number two.

When I got back up and moving again, I forgot what I did the first time, decided to try another method . I used a dry brush technique which really gave me the aged patina I was going for, without all the painting on and wiping off that I did on the first chair.

 To dry brush, dip the brush into the glaze and then dabbed it back off on the sides of the bowl or on a piece of paper. You want your brush to be “dry.” I never had more than this amount on the brush.

You really just want to be very light with the application. Short strokes, in a back and forth motion was all it took. It sure beats all the painting on and wiping back off.

I applied a couple of coats of clear Minwax Paste Furniture Wax. I like to apply the wax with an old brush to get an even coat. Once it dried to a dull finish, I buffed out the wax until it had a nice shine.

We’re ready for our close-up!

I plan on using this same paint technique on my piano! It’s quickly moving up my To Do list.

Tell me, does it look like aged silver to you?

Cost Breakdown:

• Behr Paint Sample – Stash on Hand
• Krylon Metallic Spray Paint – $3.00 (1.5 Cans – Had 1 Can in Stash)
• Valspar Antiquing Glaze – Stash on Hand
• Minwax Paste Furniture Wax – Stash on Hand

Total Project Cost: $3.00

Total Project Time – About 5 hours with drying time

Suesan

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A Double Feature & A Big Girl Play Date

I’m thrilled to be featured today by the wonderful Carol from The Answer is Chocolate on her Blog Feature Friday.

Carol lives in the Pacific Northwest, which is where I grew up. I love her blog and if you haven’t been by, be sure to check out her great blog.

Also, the lovely Miss Beckie from Knock Off Décor (and Infarrantly Creative) featured my Roadside Rescued Shelf.

Thank You, Carol & Beckie, for the shining the spotlight on me and my projects today.

Speaking of spotlight, last weekend I got to play with two of the most adorable girls in the world. Sarah and Ashleigh, the talented girls behind, Sincerely by Ashleigh & Sarah, came to visit me.

We worked on a tufting project together and we’ll have a post about that soon. They are as talented as they are beautiful. Check out these pictures they took of some of my projects.

My copperized chalk globe looks so pretty! The lovebirds and scale I found from a super-scary house, but it was worth the potential risk to life and limb for the treasures I scored there. You can read about my adventure here.

 I made the moss-covered ball there by gluing some moss on a slightly deformed Styrofoam ball I had left over from a long-ago project.

As if I didn’t need a reminder about how badly I need an actual camera and not a cell phone for shooting pictures, look how amazing they made my comic book wreath clock look?

I can’t even bear to put my picture up for a comparison next to their beautiful photograph. You’ll have to go look at the post. Their picture made me fall in love with this project again.

One thing I haven’t posted about is my silver platter wall, but only because there was no way for me to get a good picture in this space. There’s no source of natural light, but that didn’t stop Miss Sarah one little bit.

I actually have several more platters to add to this area. The platters are painted in the leftover chalkboard paint I had from the globe project. I love the tin and silver platters together. You’ll have to wait until I move (late summer/early fall) to see the final reveal on this project.

They have many more pictures to send me, including ones of the cane back chairs I did but have yet to really post about…mostly because my pictures were bad. I’m so excited to finally share that project with you.

I truly loved getting to spend time with Ashleigh in Sarah. If I could sum them up in one word, it would be “Delightful.”

 Go check out their delightful blog. Sarah designs a free printable calendar for each month and Ashleigh is becoming a furniture restorer extraordinaire! Both Sarah and Ashleigh are graphic design students and they’re going to help me redesign my blog. I can’t wait to see their ideas. Did I mention how talented they are?

Thanks for playing with me, girls. I can’t wait for our next project.

Suesan

Summer Wreath

A few months back, I picked up this straw wreath for $2 at a close-out sale from the local Flower Factory.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I knew I wanted to use it for a summer wreath. I started by covering the wreath with some leftover swimsuit material I had from when I made my cast cover.

I actually goofed when cutting the fabric and it wasn’t big enough to go around the whole wreath. Being the creative girl that I am, I made it work by stapling the fabric onto the wreath and then gluing a section of fabric over the open area.

I gathered the fabric as I stapled it so the bumpy texture of the wreath is less noticeable.

Many, many, MANY staples gave their lives for this project. I do NOT recommend this method to anyone, lest you think this is an endorsement. I was just determined to use the fabric and after a nasty burn with the glue gun, I needed to find a way to temporarily hold the fabric on that wouldn’t result in further injury to yours truly.

I may have mentioned it a time or fifty, but I’m a complete klutz at times.

I got this far and then inspiration fled like the supporters of a scandalized politician. It just went out the door and refused to come back.

Since it was swimsuit material, I tried to think of swimming things but everything I came up with was too cutesy and too little-kiddish. I did think it’d be cute with a little beach ball, sand pail and shovel and sun glasses and baby flip-flops on it. I just wasn’t in love with the idea for our house.

I finally came up with a solution, when I found a strand of flowers and blueberry clusters at JoAnn’s for 50% off. I broke out the glue gun again, and I even managed to stay burn free this time around.

I also found the glass butterflies at JoAnn’s for $1.50/each. The mini chalkboard sign was $1.

This is the only picture that really shows what the fabric looks like. It’s little tiny silver dots on a black background.

I recycled the ribbon from a box of chocolates that my boss sent to me on Administrative Professional’s day.

I love the colors and how it turned out.

I’d love to put some pots of flowers on our step, but it’s just too narrow for that. Plus we’re still planning on moving into a new house this summer, so I don’t want to invest in this home.

What’d you think? Does it look like summer to you?

Cost Breakdown:

• Straw Wreath – $2.00
• Flowers and greenery – $6.50
• Butterflies – $3.00
• Mini Sign – $1.00
• Fabric and Ribbon – Stash on hand

Total Project Cost – $12.50

Total Project Time – About 2 hours.

Suesan

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Roadside Rescue–Wall Shelf

We happen to live in a neighborhood with a lot of rentals, so every now and again, someone moves and we are able to find a treasure or two that they leave behind.

Case in point.

Lovely, isn’t it? Eh…what? You’re not convinced? Come on? What’s wrong with it?

Okay, so maybe it’s coming apart at the seams, just a bit.

And it’s got a ding or two. But that’s nothing a resourceful Chica like myself can’t fix with some clamps, glue and a little bit of wood putty.

Besides, it passed Fur Child’s sniff test, so I brought it home. Hubs and the boys gave me their standard, “Are you completely cracked in the noggin’?” look, but I knew there was a gem here.

I painted it in my Heirloom White-ish paint, that I had mixed at Lowes. This is the same paint I used on my $25 Buffet. When I plan to use the Metallic Patina Glaze, I like the glaze to have something to grab onto.

For this reason, I use a brush instead of spray paint for my projects. I know some of you may not like to go that route, but for a piece like this that doesn’t have a lot of details, the paint strokes can be your friend.

I dry brush the glaze onto the piece and the brushstrokes give the glaze those teeny nooks and crannies to fill which gives the piece some dimension.

I sprayed some adhesive on the back and covered it with burlap I had on hand.

It sat around my house for several weeks because I couldn’t find the baggie where I put the hardware from the back of it. Since I was still recovering from my foot surgery, it was hard to look around. Also, all the things I wanted to put on the shelf were downstairs and required me to hunt through some boxes.

I finally got it together though. Want to see?

With the exception of the folding rulers, the picture frames and the German Chocolate Candy Tin, everything on the shelf is from Hub’s family.

This is the camera case for the camera on the top, right shelf. It’s hard to see, but I have a 1935 GE light meter which was necessary before the days of automatic camera settings.

I love this camera and have wanted to display it for the last 15 years, but I didn’t dare put it out until Buddy and Kiddo were old enough to leave it alone.

I love the old lead toys. The donkey and the sailor are authentically aged. Hubs and I were hoping to find sailors with other semaphore flags, but after a bit of research, we don’t think they ever made those.

The baby pictures are of Hub’s maternal grandparents. His grandmother, Dorothy—who was from Kansas— is in the middle and again on the left. His grandfather, Bert, is in the black “dress” on the right. I love these pictures. There’s also an old pocket knife that is never going to open again.

This is Hub’s mom, Grandma Pat, and her baby shoes. I have dozens of pictures like this of Hub’s family. In fact, I could wallpaper an entire room with them. I love the old embossed, cardboard frames they came in. Some of them are really works of art.

I included some pictures of my kids over here, too. This is Man-Child giving Baby Girl the choke-hold of love. It’s one of my favorite pictures, but it’s stuck to the glass so I can’t remove it. I keep meaning to scan it, though, and see if I can get a bigger copy of it.

The silver pencil is from one of Hub’s great-grandmothers. I’m not sure why it was on a lanyard. It has a lovely etched design along the sides of the pencil.

 

This is a stereoscopic viewer, called the Perfecscope, from 1895. Stereoscopes were a pre-television form of entertainment in the early 1900s. When you look through the viewer, the two pictures blend into one and it creates a 3-D effect.

When Hubs would go to Kansas every summer to visit his grandparent’s, he loved looking at all the cards. We have hundreds of them. Most are pretty boring, but some are funny. They were often sold in sets as story lines.

I still have some work to do in this area. I’m just keeping it real here, because this is how it looks most of the time. The guns stay there because we often need them to chase critters out of our yard that are making Fur Child go nuts. The dog bone hasn’t been touched since Christmas, and needs to be pitched. The sword armory is usually kept by the guns, but after a recent battle they found a new home and they haven’t made it back yet.

Ah…life with boys.

Cost Breakdown:

• Shelf – Rescued – Free
• Paint – Free
• Glaze – Stash on hand
• Burlap – Stash on hand

Total Project Cost – Free

Total Project Time – About 3 hours with paint drying time.

Suesan