A Chair Named Lucy

Yesterday I shared with you that this would be chair week!  I will share a different chair every day (and I mean different!) ending with a reveal of the set with my newly refinished dining room table!

These chairs have gotten the best of me the last few weeks.  I have been excited, stumped, discouraged, annoyed, and even frustrated with them all.  But they have all taught me that design is a process.  Things change, evolve into the end product.  There are lots of layers to making something look aged.   In the end, I am happy with the result (but I really don't know how I got here!)

I am kicking off chair week with Lucy.  Lucy came from a garage sale where she was sadly sitting at the end of the driveway. I liked her shape and she was super-solid (which I find an attractive quality in a dining room chair :) 

I used the same process that I told you about in this post and she was glowing.  I mean, if-I-turned-the-sun-off-and-the-whole-world-was-dark-I-could-still-see-this-chair GLOWING.  

Enter stage left - the feeling of discouragement.

I sat on the color of the chair for a few days (ha!) and eventually decided it was NOT what I wanted, but it was a good base to what I did want.  I got out my brush and glazed her a bit with some black, and then glazed her a bit with some white.

TIP:  I have seen a bajillion people do posts about glazing and, somehow. when I went to the store to buy some... I didn't know what or how to buy it.  I went in asking for black glaze and twice, TWICE, they said they didn't have that and sent me away.  The third time I went in I told them that there are a million bloggers using black glaze so don't tell me you don't have any.  The man said, "Oh, all you have to do is buy the glaze and then mix whatever paint color you want at 1 part paint to 4 parts glaze."  Seriously?!  Not happy with the first 2 places I tried.  So if you go, here is what you are looking for (brand doesn't really matter and the small size will last you a long time!)

Then just get a little tester color of black or white (or any color) and mix it 1 part paint to 4 parts glaze.  I plan on doing a tutorial on glazing soon, but just in case you want to buy some sooner... I'll save you the trouble of expecting the people that work in the paint department to know what they are talking about :)

TURN OFF RANT NOW....

After a few hours of slapping on glaze and wiping it off a little more glaze....  

May I introduce you to Lucy, who turned out exactly how I wanted her to

Remember the vintage bird cage print I did with freezer paper?  Lucy was the proud recipient.

And while it appears crooked, I swear it's not :)

Her seat is a little plain, but trust me, when seated next to the dining room table I am refinishing... she is going to need to be a little toned down! 

It's been a long adventure, but in the end I must admit, that I LOVE Lucy :)

Do you?

Happy Monday!

Check out the completed dining room set here!

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It's Chair Week!

Remember this picture? 

 And this one?

Our dining room set was given to us the day we got engaged by some friends who were moving and didn't want it anymore.  The table is beautiful, in need of a little love, but her lines are amazing.  Check out those legs!

But the 6 chairs that went with them?  Yeah, they were in rough shape.  The backs were made of layers of thin wood that were splintering apart.  When you leaned back on them, they would snap and splinter into little shards of wood.  I was always a little afraid to have guests over, because I never wanted my chairs to stab them in the back.

I have seen mismatched chairs at a dining room table before, and I have always been a little fond of the eclectic look of it.  It's fun, different.  And I like fun and different :)  So I went to looking.  It took me awhile, but I finally ended up with that happy set above.

I like my stuff to look loved.  Like it has a great story and history to tell.  I like things to look like they were pulled from the bottom of a rusty junk pile and then loved a little bit.  I'm weird like that.  If they don't have a story, then I'm at least going to make them look like they have a darn good one.

So that is what this week is about.  Starting tomorrow I will be featuring a chair a day for 6 days.  They are all done differently.  Ok they aren't all done yet... that's why I have to take it slow revealing them :) But they will all tie together.  Promise.

On the seventh day, I will reveal them as a set (and hint, hint the table looks way different and I'm UBER-excited about it!!!)

Have a relaxing Sunday... I'm going to watch my Falcons win :)

Katie

Freezer Paper Greatness!!!

I have seen a few different people mention ways to transfer images onto fabric.  I wasn't too keen on the idea of running my fabric through my printer, I don't like the plastic-y (totally made up that word) feeling of an iron on transfer, and I didn't feel like running 30 minutes away to the local health food store to get citrasolv when I was ready to do my lamp yesterday.  Eventually I found a few sites (I'm not sure where they all are to reference them, but there are lots!) that said you can transfer images to fabric using only 3 things... Yes, I used to freezer paper to make this!

Heres what I used... freezer paper (what!?), a piece of paper, and spray adhesive.

I had all of those things so I figured it was worth a shot!  Ignore the pillow in the above picture, I was going to attempt a different project that didn't pan out...

Here's what I did...  (the project I will showing you is part of a chair revamp)

Step One:  Lay your freezer paper shiny side down on a table. Spray your piece of paper with the spray adhesive and lay it on top of the freezer paper creating one sheet.

Step Two:  Trim around the edges until they are the same size.

Step Three:  Find the image you would like to transfer onto your fabric.  I chose this birdcage from the one and only Graphic Fairy.

Step Four:  If your image contains numbers or letters, use your printing options or an editing program to mirror the image.  Photoshop elements calls it flip horizontally.  Resize your image if needed.

Step Five:  Place your Freezer paper in your printer so that the printer will print onto the freezer paper side.  Print your image.

Step Six:  Remove image from printer **BE CAREFUL NOT TO SMEAR** Dampen the surface you are transferring on to just a little bit.  (I just take a squeezed out paper towel and rub it over the fabric a few times)

Step Seven:  Place the image face down very carefully onto your fabric and use a blunt solid object to rub some pressure over the image.

Step Eight:  Peel away your transfer. Those messy dark spots around the outside are just where I got it a little too wet...

I love how this makes the image look washed and vintage.  It looks like it has been there a lot longer than it has!  

No idea why this is sideways, but I'll go with it....

I'm not going to show you where this image is ending up quite yet, but I will show you this lamp I did using the same technique! 

UPDATE:  To see where this project was used see here and here.

If you are interested in the pallet art, you can find that here!

Remember that lamp from a few days ago?  I think she's a lot cuter now :)

On a sad note, I am now out of freezer paper until I stop blogging and go to the grocery store already!!

I decided that I want to start posting a few pictures from elsewhere in my house every now and then.  I will call this the "keepin-it-real" segment of my post.  I, in no way, want anyone to think that my house is perfect all the time.  I don't have it all together and my home isn't EVER "magazine ready".  So here you go... are you ready?  I don't think you are :)

The playroom in it's usual state of mass chaos.  One day I'll get around to organizing this...

My bedroom.  Granted it's painting day, so cut me a little slack on this one :)

Feel better now? I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!  Now back to work :)

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