My First DIY with Chalk Paint

I have jumped on the chalk paint bandwagon! I come from a very, VERY artsy family...all my parents do these days is make jewelry and amazingly good clay sculptures and paintings, and travel from one art show to the next...and I am the total black sheep of the family when it comes to that. Give me a ball of any sort and I'm good to go, but art, I have no talent or creativity! Ha! So, because of that, Joel didn't have a whole lot of faith in me when I told him I wanted to re-finish a foyer table. I don't blame him! Thankfully, while we were in Nashville last weekend, Anna was working on doing the same thing to a table of hers and she was able to teach me how to do it. Otherwise, it probably would not have turned out so well! She even took me to a store in Nashville and told me everything I needed to buy, including $80 in paintbrushes, which I about fell on the floor about. But, now that I've used them, I think they were worth it! I think?!?!?

 

So this is the before...

 

And this is after!

I love it! Someday I'll do a house tour when we have the den fixed the way we want it, and show the whole room, but it really adds a pop of color to our den. The walls are gray and the rug is gray with a slight hint of bluish gray in it. This was so much fun to do! It was quick and easy, and you really couldn't mess it up if you tried. And if you did mess it up, you just paint over it and start again (I did have to do that a couple of times). It's really that simple!

Just for reference, I used Annie Sloan Louis Blue with a combination of the dark and clear wax. I actually preferred just the clear so there's not a ton of the dark wax showing up on it. The piece already had some really nice cracks to it, so I was able to easily sand it after I painted it to get the distressed look I was going for, along with sanding all of the edges of the piece.

I think there will be more re-dos in the near future. I've already told my parents I'm going to raid their storage unit looking for old pieces that I can have. I really can't wait!