Silence and Support for Sandy Hook

Source: Anderson Cooper

Today's post is black

Today's post is not about furniture or decorating or paint or anything lighthearted like that. Today's post is about trying to understand. It's about sending our prayers and our thoughts to the families in Connecticut. It's about hugging our loved ones tonight, and remembering what is important.

My heart is sad and heavy, I cannot comprehend this. I could live a million years and never get it. So many of us work so hard to do so much good in the world and to love and care for our families, and then we hear about tragedies like this and we fail to find the words to express how we feel. We can only pray and support each other.

Go home. Go home and hug your loved ones tight tonight.

My Christmas tree is staying dark tonight in memory of the victims. I know, it's a small gesture, perhaps without much impact, but it's how I feel.

Country Grey and City Grey meet in Florence

Hi everyone,

Is everybody in the US still in a turkey induced stupor or are you out in full force doing Black Friday shopping? Either way, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I bought this small table (or bench?) at a garage sale. It was an expensive garage sale. They had many gorgeous antiques, but they were asking as much as a store would. It was an "new" older couple, two widowed people merging households, and I was thinking, good luck with getting rid of stuff at this rate.

Nevertheless, I was able to negotiate a deal on two items. On of them was the table I showed here. The other was this:

I'm not quite sure actually if it's a table of a bench, but I loved all the detailing on it.

These are the after pictures. It sat in my family room for at least three weeks, in other words, plenty of time for me to take a before picture, but do you think I did? Noooooooooo! 

Just imagine a dark wood table. Go ahead, close your eyes and picture it. I'll wait.

And then, tada!!

When came time to paint it, I couldn't think of what to do with it, until I saw a chevron pattern somewhere, I forget where. Now, I know what you're thinking, what is she talking about, that's no chevron pattern? Well, it wasn't the chevron pattern that inspired me, but its colours: a beautiful bluey green and a putty grey. Very trendy. Florence from Annie Sloan Chalk Paint was the perfect match. However, for the putty grey, not so easy. Paris grey was too blue and Country Grey was too green. Solution? Mix them both together in equal parts. It was exactly the colour I had in mind. The blue of Paris Grey and the green of Country grey were perfect partners to Florence's bluey green.

And then came the fun part: stencilling. I found this beautiful silkscreening stencil from Martha Stewart. These are pricey, but they are beautifully detailed and make seamless patterns. The finished result does not look stencilled at all. It comes in several pieces which you can place any way you want, which allows for varied designs. I'm thinking of investing in a few more, they're that beautiful.

The woodwork is so lovely and lacey!

I did minimal distressing on it and just a touch of dark wax.

This is by far one of my favourite pieces. It's at the store now and I'm almost hoping it doesn't sell!

So, what do you think, bench or table?

Linking up to:

Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint and 10,000 views!

It is a foggy morning here as I write this. It happens when the seasons are in transition. Cold air meeting warm air and all that.

When I looked at my stats today, my blog had hit 10,000 views! It might not seem like a lot of views for some bloggers, in fact some of them get that many in in a day probably, lol, but for for me, this is a big milestone and worth mentioning.

Speaking of blogs with a lot of views, most of you are probably familiar with Miss Mustard Seed's blog, but if you're not, you should pay her a visit. She is a great inspiration to me when it comes to painting furniture and decorating, etc. She has evolved from mere blogger to authoring her own book and creating her own line of milk paint. (And all this while raising two little boys!)

A while back, she was approached by Homestead House Paint Company, a milk paint company located right here in Toronto, Canada. They asked her to create her own line with her own colours. It has been interesting to watch her progress, hard work and finally, success in creating this line.

I have used milk paint from this company many years ago on a couple of furniture pieces. Milk paint applied to raw wood is virtually unchippable. It's the best paint adherence there is. On varnished and painted furniture, you have to use a bonding agent to make it adhere, otherwise the paint chips in places, but this can be highly desirable for a wonderful distressed look. Milk paint is an old paint formula, it is organic, biodegradable and has zero VOC.

Yesterday, I stopped at a Home Hardware, a Canadian chain of hardware stores, and I was surprised and thrilled to find Miss Mustard Seed's paints!

 The colour I bought is called "typewriter", a wonderful black with slight brown undertones. I have a music sheet cabinet that I envisioned painting in black, this will be perfect to test it.

I also picked up a free colour chart:

The colours Marian (Miss Mustard Seed) chose were inspired by favourite objects. You'll find posts about what inspired each colour.

I bought the bonding agent as for the piece I want to paint, I don't want too much chippiness, but rather just a bit of wear.

Can't wait to use it! 

If you want to learn more about milk paint and how to use it, visit Marian's blog to view her tutorials.


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Still Inspired by Paris

You see the beautiful blue door in the bigger picture in the following collage?

That was the first picture I took in Paris. I love doors and boy, was I in for a treat in Paris. This was "just a regular" apartment door near where we stayed. Beautiful door, beautiful colour. 

The piece of furniture on the top right was at the Little Palace museum. I thought the blue was so beautiful that I told myself I would definitely paint something in that colour.

There are a couple more blue doors in the collage, one of which is a door to an apartment where Van Gogh lived (the one with the number 54). 

The tapestry on the bottom left is from Versailles. The ceiling and chandelier on the right is at the Garnier Opera House. The ceiling, which also contain that blue, was painted by Marc Chagall.

So when I found this gorgeous antique server at the curb side (yes, someone was throwing it out! We have pretty good garbage around here!), it was one of those moments, you know, when you turn the corner and the heavens open up with beams of light point to it and the angels going "Haaaaaaaa"! And I thought, there's my blue piece!

It was in perfect shape.

It has all its original, gorgeous brass hardware.

Ian Watson was here, lol! (This was in one of the drawers.)

The only flaw was a piece missing in one of the drawers. I patched it up with wood filler.

I used Aubusson Blue from Annie Sloan, which is a perfect match to the blue in my collage.

There she is all done.

My formal china matches perfectly!

I used the dark wax all over, which really gave the blue a rich, deep tone.

The brass hardware looks even better against the blue.

Ian Watson and the hole got covered with some lovely wallpaper I found at the 

Reuse Centre in our city.

You can really see the dark wax at work here.

Love!

The lighting was not ideal, even though it was daytime. I used a flash here, not ideal in this instance, but it really shows the colour and the dark undertones well.

The server is now at Refined and Rustic Interiors awaiting its new home.

I'm so glad I took so many pictures in Paris (almost a thousand, thank God for digital cameras!!). These will inspire me for years to come, not only for the colours, but also for the beautiful styles. Paris has so many treasures, you can't help return home with your head full of beautiful images and decorating ideas. And if I happen to run out of inspiration? Gosh, I'll have to go back, won't I?

Nicole

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Linking up to:

Peppler Night Tables

Happy Tuesday! Halloween is a distant memory, November is well on its way and here the stores have all changed over to their Christmas decors. Crazy. I even saw a few snowflakes yesterday. Gasp!!

Today I'm posting about a pair of night tables I found at the curb. Solid wood. Gorgeous. The only thing wrong with them was that a couple of the legs had come off. In our throwaway society, that's excuse enough to discard something... At least they had the good sense of including the legs...! All that required was a good wood glue. A simple repair that cost pennies.

They might be somewhat old, because the name "Peppler" was branded inside the drawer. A little bit of research revealed that this is a now defunct Canadian high end furniture making company that was established in Hanover, Ontario. I'm not sure, but I believe they may have been bought out by what is now the Sklar-Peppler company. I couldn't find any information to that effect. So, I don't now for sure how old the tables are, but they're really solid and great workmanship.

Dodo head here forgot to take a before pic. Here's one of the drawers anyhoo:

And a view from the bottom, lol! (It's the piece with green tape at the top left of the picture.

 I remembered to take a photo of the handles mid-painting:

Quite gorgeous!

I painted the tables in Annie Sloan French Linen. I painted the handles with ASCP Old White, and also used Old White to dry brush the wood trim on the drawer fronts to accent them and tie in with the handles. After a coat of ASCP Clear Wax all over, I then applied some ASCP dark wax to the wood trim to give them an aged look. No distressing, just solid paint.

 French Linen is such a great, versatile neutral. Love it.

I brought them to Rustic and Refined Interiors and they sold almost right away! It gives me joy to think that somebody likes my work. They like it, they really like it!!

Linking up to: