Before and After – Sea Glass Buffet

I haven’t posted anything for a while, so I’ll come back to blogging with an easy before and after post. I’ll apologize now for the blurry photos. My Littles were playing with my tripod not long ago, and they seem to have misplaced the part that lets me attach my camera to the tripod. So low light from a rainy day and my not-so-steady hand produced no-so-crisp photos.

I found this sweet two-drawer buffet at one of my favorite second hand shops.

So pretty, but the finish was in pretty rough shape. I knew immediately what I wanted it to look like, and it was the perfect chance for me to try my new Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint that I just received from Robyn Story Designs with free shipping (I love free shipping).

I mixed one part Kitchen Scale to 3 parts Ironstone to get the pale greenish blue that I imagined. 

I used the bonding agent on the sides because they were already pretty distressed with damaged veneer. I didn’t want the milk paint to chip off and make the sides look more distressed. For the drawer fronts, I just mixed Ironstone into the cup that still had a bit of leftover paint from the main color. Sorry, no color formula, just winging it. The details are highlighted with Ironstone. A fun bit of milk paint chemistry occurred when I painted the drawer fronts. A bit of the previous finish lifted and mixed with the milk paint, changing my color to an even more greenish hue and giving a beautiful washed look.

The piece turned out even better than I expected. The colors remind me of sea glass. I priced it at $175 and it’s now for sale at the School House Antique Mall.

Shared with Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday. I’m #75.

Family Ornament Making

First of all, if you get a feed of my blog posts, you got a pretty strange post. It wasn’t from me, I was hacked. WordPress caught it, but not in time to prevent the post from being sent to feed readers. Hopefully, it won’t happen again.

Now, onto much more interesting things.

Our oldest son is home for Thanksgiving. He hasn’t been home since April. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am to have six of our seven children home. Music, laughter, basketball playing, video gaming, Lego battles, seeing his face in the morning, watching him get to know his littlest little brother and refresh his relationship with his other siblings who have grown and changed so much since he’s been gone. These are the things that make distances hard, but homecomings wonderful.

One of the things we all worked on together was finishing up some things for our space at the School House Antique Mall. There is a gigantic sale there the weekend after Thanksgiving, and our space was far too empty to go into a sale weekend. I had some things I’ve been working on, but needed to put finishing touches on them all. So yesterday was family crafting day. We got so much done together. It was funny watching my husband trying to tie bows on some things, but he did such a great job.

There was much more I wanted to get done to take into the shop today, but even though I was up to get an early start, Silas woke up just after I pulled everything out, so my morning was much less productive than I had hoped. But I got some quiet snuggle time with him, and I know how fleeting these days with little ones are, so I treasure them.

I wish I could show you some great photos of our space at the antique mall, but my camera is MIA, possibly stolen, but we hope not. So until it resurfaces, I’m stuck with the camera on my iPad, which is wonderfully handy, but woefully short on the little things, like focus, sharpness, exposure, shutter speed. So please forgive me for my out of focus and not too interesting pictures.

We made some sheet music filled glass ornaments,

and a few clay angel wings,

and some sheet music, glitter and clay button ornaments.

We topped it all off with a book page wreath that I don’t have a good picture to show you. Our tree is up and our space is much more filled. And while there are still many, many more things I’d love to have in our space, it is definitely ready for the sale.

So if you find yourself in Brewer, Maine on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday after Thanksgiving, stop by and visit. There are so many booths offering some very lovely things that would make wonderful Christmas gifts. And everything over $10 is 20% off!