Custom orders galore! And I've got steel wool in my poly...

So the past two months have been crazy busy with custom orders. I started this blog with intentions of posting weekly, and have failed immensely. However, the good news is, it's because of the amount of custom orders that have come in lately, keeping me so busy! Not to mention, prepping middle schoolers for impending SOL testing (yikes!).

So one of my favorite custom orders I've done recently was a vintage desk, painted in Paris Grey and Indigo blue. So, Annie Sloan does not make indigo blue chalk paint, so I resolved to mix it myself. And mix I did. Several different batches.
I used a based Napoleonic Blue, then slowly started adding in Primer Red. It was turning out too Navy blue, and I was nervous to overdo it on the red, since I was only using a sample sized jar, and really didn't want to drive all the way back to Falls Church to buy more paint.
But, I got over my hesitation and poured the red in. Still too Navy. Sigh.
Thanks to some googling, and fellow bloggers, I decided I was using The wrong shade of red. So I trekked back to Falls church and got a sample of Annie Sloan Emperors Silk, a slightly brighter red.
Remixed various times and finally came up the perfect shade of midnight indigo. Painted the top and drawer fronts of the desk, then added a little more red for a slightly more purple shade and went back around the edges, and it turned out a beautiful accent color that seemed to change in the light. The rest of the desk got two coats of Paris Grey, then lightly distressed and coated with clear gloss poly. The original hardware was left as is, and I was pretty pleased with the result.

I call it "The Starry Night" desk, because it reminds me so much of my favorite Van Gough painting.

Also, as a side note, if you sand chalk paint using steel wool, it will inevitably get in our polyurethane, causing major hassle and headache.

So, what do you think?