Putting It All Together

I had to decide on some colors and I did not want to overwhelm my room. Its small and I want the atmosphere to remain light and airy. I am the type to use lots of colors and fill every single space in the room but I am trying to get a little more sophisticated in my old age. I still want color but not walls and walls of it.

I started with prints I had copied at Staples

and a rug, a table, a chair and two love seats that I purchased from my favorite thrift store Trosa

and I dragged an old project from the kids game room: the top aka the hutch of a china closet that I use for books and to set a TV on top. It went through a slight transformation and was very colorful because it was for the kids (grandkids). It will have to be redone for this room

and stencils I purchased from Nicolette Tabram, a talented artist based in the UK

She is the artist that I saw a long time ago and could not find again until just recently and when I did I ordered her stencils with the quickness. My order came VERY quickly. The stencils were a nice thickness and the design had nice details and the lines were not that small. I was pleased with that. I tried to stencil one time before with stencils I found in Michael’s but it came out a mess because the lines were too thin and in trying to get the paint in it leaked under the stencil all over the place…what a mess… so I had my fingers crossed on Nicolette’s stencils.

First step was to pick out a color pallet. I took one of the photos to Lowes and had them color match. In case you can’t tell… my colors are purple, golden brown, red and a bluish gray or maybe I should say a grayish blue. Oh and flat black paint. I have a quart of black paint but the rest are these sample jars, which is more than enough paint to do what I want to do. I tell you paying $3-4 a color is VERY liberating!!

I also picked up some stencil brushes from Walmart. They were super cheap and after using them I decided in the future I will try to add a better grade of stencil brush to my collection. These were about $3. They worked but the whole time I was painting I was thinking these are such crap!!

I did some repairs to the chairs by removing the screws and adding longer screws and reinforced the joints with wood glue.

The next day I cleaned my table and chairs off and sanded them down to get the sheen off. A light sanding not a sanding down to the bare wood…I mean it’s freezing cold outside so I had to do this in my house. I then painted it with a coat of gray primer. I like the way the chair looks painted. I can see the details a little better.

I painted the top of the table, the hutch and the chair in black and a few things happened. 1- I realized the chair looks terrible in black 2- I like the table in two colors . I had also painted the hutch in black and purple and I found out that 3- I like the color combo.

I decided to paint the chair red and the bottom of the table purple.

I was a little scared to start stenciling but I put some spray adhesive on the back of the stencils, let them dry and then I forged ahead. I made many mistakes but the design was so busy you could not see the mistakes. I LOVE these stencils! Here are the steps

I have not finished the chairs yet. I will stencil them in black but right now I need to work on putting my house together. If someone knocked on my door right now I would absolutely die…or talk to them outside lol. Oh and in case you noticed that I did not use the golden brown paint that is because the brainiac in Lowe’s screwed the top on the paint real tight after he mixed it. Its sealed shut now. One rule I found about these sample paints is to NEVER screw the top on tight. It will seal shut every time.