Boardwalk Empire and a 1920's Dresser

Considering its been more than a month since my last post, you all can see how busy it's been! I currently have around 12 orders place for custom pieces, so the "furniture factory" is in overdrive right now, but I so love it! I've also gone back to my "real" job, since my last post, teaching 7th and 8th graders, so needless to say, I'm exhausted!

This week I wanted to do a "before" and "after" blog about one of my favorite pieces of late, a 1920's style dresser that I picked up at a thrift store a few months back and recently sold. Have I mentioned I LOVE the 1920's?!?

Here she is before, in her well-loved state:

Sorry for the ridiculously bad picture, but my storage unit is super crowded right now, its hard to get a good angle on anything!

So, I had her listed for a few months available as a custom order, and there were no takers.  Sometimes its hard to envision what a piece can look like once it complete, especially when their "before" is pretty shabby and not so chic.

I brought her home and decided to do a custom mix of Annie Sloan chalk paints to create a creamy, vintage shade of white.  I mixed pure white with country grey and a tad bit of Arles yellow to create the shade.
A few coats of paint, some light distressing, and a glossy finish coat later, here she is:

 

A true 1920's beauty, if you ask me! I sold it within the week to a local buyer, and I have been trying to track down a similar piece ever since, to keep for myself :-)

As a side note, while we're on the subject of the 1920's, which is by far my favorite era furniture and style-wise; one of my favorite show's HBO's Boardwalk Empire has finally returned and my Sunday nights have been made whole again! I think I may have been a flapper in my past life, and long to visit a speakeasy (I hear there's one in Old Town Alexandria, anyone ever checked it out?!)

I also found this Pinterest board full of 1920's style decor and style:

What Color is that?! Vol. 1

Greek Blue! 

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint "Greek Blue" is a very specific color, in my opinion. It is absolutely gorgeous, but it is just as the name describes; truly reminiscent of those gorgeous blue Greek rooftops:

You can read the official description of the color here on the Annie Sloan website

  

I've used it only on a few pieces; sparingly in the first piece, layered under "Louis Blue" on the top of this little end table, with the bottom in French Linen

Then, I used it not so sparingly on a custom ordered china cabinet in Greek Blue with the inside in Country Grey:

I love those two pieces, I mean, look at that china cabinet! But I really wanted to do a piece that felt true to the color.  I recently found this little piece in a thrift store that I frequent:

 And at that same thrift store, I saw a large collection of those gorgeous vintage blue and white ceramic vases, kind of like these:

Photo Credit: http://www.amandacarolathome.com/2012/01/dining-room-for-spring.html

So I used those vases for a little inspiration, and once I painted the top of it in the Greek blue, I knew how I wanted it to look. I used "Old White" on the base of the piece, some light distressing, and did a scroll pattern and damask stenciling pattern on the cabinet panels and drawers. Here's how it turned out:

So...with all of that being said, I'm in love with Greek Blue!

What color would you like to see featured in the next blog post?

Only 2 more weeks...

...until I have to go back to the real world of teaching middle school! ahhh! Summer has literally flown by, being so busy doing custom orders, I feel like I haven't even stopped to enjoy the fact that I've been able to do furniture full time all summer. Until I start to see those "back to school" commercials on tv and it brings me back to reality; soon I'll be back to the old routine of teaching 7th and 8th grade and running Furniture Alchemy. sigh.

This little piece caught a lot of attention this week, and rightfully so(in my humble opinion), it's super cute! It was featured on "Furniture Flippin'" and "Cutting Edge Stencils"

Thanks to all of that, I'm nearing 300 "likes" on my facebook page!  Make sure to stop by and say hi!
http://www.facebook.com/FurnitureAlchemy

 In order to keep it short and sweet, here are a few highlights from the past week:

1. One of my military trunks was purchased by a tv/film producer for FX and Comedy Central so that was super exciting!
2. I'm waging war against my shipping provider. I will win all battles, and the war.
3. I arrived home yesterday to find two strangers in my apartment.  Property manager neglected to mention to me that they would be coming by for air conditioner maintenance; and I nearly shanked the poor fellows. Then called and yelled at the property manager. I don't think it will happen again.
4. I'm trying really hard to come up with a #4....only having 3 items on my list makes it seem pretty dull; but i'm at a loss, so I guess we'll just stick with 3 highlights.

 Back to painting! Happy Tuesday everyone!

A lost treasure returns!

July has been busy and the closer we get to August, the more I start dreading going back to work.  Teaching 7th and 8th grade can be very rewarding and I love teaching; but it is also tiresome, frustrating, and it means I have to start getting up and showering again in the mornings.  ugh.

So, I wanted to share a little story in this weeks blog about when my mom came to visit. My mom lives in Mississippi, where I'm originally from, and she came up for 6 days a few weeks ago. It was great having her here, and she even learned some of the furniture refinishing trade and has gone back home and chalk painted her very first table!!

On her last day here, she wanted to stop at Home Goods before we took her to the airport that night.  We'd been in a few days earlier and I saw a little cabinet that I really wanted to go by my door, to replace the one I had there.  It pains me to buy retail furniture, I always so "oh, I'll just do something for myself" but then I never have time to do my own pieces.  So we went back to Home Goods and she insisted on buying the cabinet for me, and I just couldn't say no, it was such a cute piece!

When we got back home, I decided to clean out the junk that was in the cabinet I had there before and put the good stuff in the new one.  As I was digging through the pile of dog sweaters that are way to small for my dogs now and I don't know why I've held on to them (I guess its like a mother keeping her children's baby clothes:-) I found a lost treasure!

Back in the winter, I lost a diamond ring that my fiancee had given me last year for our anniversary (not my engagement ring, but an equally gorgeous ring!) and I cried for days over it. and there, in the pile of dog sweaters, I found my ring!

My new cabinet and my old ring returned!

I was elated because I'd only just recently resolved to myself that it was gone forever and I should stop looking for it, and there it was! Who knows how long it would have been before I found it (if ever) if my mom hadn't have insisted on buying this little cabinet for me at Home Goods!

Aaaand, I used the old cabinet to organize my work room, which is now, for the first time ever, in a somewhat orderly state!

I finally have a place for things!

Flea Market Bust and the Holy Grail

Since its summer, and I've been able to work on pieces during the week a lot more, Saturday mornings has now become "picking time"... My favorite time to go out to flea markets, estate sales, and thrift stores to sift through items!
My fiancee, who is officially part of Furniture Alchemy now (I think I've converted him!) were looking around for flea markets to go to yesterday, and decided to go to the Gaithersburg fairgrounds flea market.  Gaithersburg is quite a hike from Alexandria, but we decided to check it out!

It was definitely a bust. There were maybe 12 vendors, selling mostly baby clothes, socks,  and electronics, not quite what we were looking for.
There was a bright spot, however, I did find this vintage Lemonade clock and have it on sale now in my Etsy shop!

10 minutes later, we were over the Gaithersburg flea market, so we decided to hit up the Habitat for Humanity Resale shop nearby.  There's one in Alexandria, and I've found a few things there, but its always really picked over and kind of hit or miss, but thought we'd check this one out anyway.
This was NOT the case in Gaithersburg! It was like finding the Holy Grail of resale shops! Jammed full of so many items that my poor little eyes could barely take it all in :-)

I got these really Spanish ship bookends:

 
and this darling French Provincial vanity:

So, for today's math lesson:  Bookends + Vanity =  

one happy Sheila!

In other news, I was featured on Furniture Flippin' last week!You can check out the post here, and leave some love: http://furnitureflippin.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-chest-no-less.html

 

Trash to Treasure

Last summer, when I first began refinishing my own furniture, I really had no idea that it would go this far.  It started off with my grandparents dining table, as mentioned in this post, but I intended for it to be more of a fun hobby than a small business.  However, things progressed and I quickly realized that I loved refinishing furniture, so after selling a few pieces off of Craigslist, I decided to open my Etsy shop in October. 

One of the first major refinishing projects that I tackled was this table I picked up off of the curb in my condo complex:

You can't even fully see the awfulness that was this table; but it was structurally sound, and  I had a vision.  Not to mention, I NEEDED a project to keep me busy.

Here is a little side note on why I needed such a project: my boyfriend, who is now my fiance :-), was preparing to head out for a deployment with the Army and I was going a little crazy with how I was going to fill my time. So, about a week before he left, I picked up this table and brought it inside.  He saw it and his first response was "Why is this trash table in the living room?".  I told him that it was going to be my project when he left, so that I could stay busy and keep my mind off of things...and that it did.

The very day he left, I got to work.  I envisioned adding a bottom to the empty space where the drawer was, with a flip open front for storage, and wanted to try out some color layering and distressing techniques I'd been reading about on Pinterest, but had yet to try out.  So, I got my supplies and a few days later, after a lot of trials and re-do's, this is the piece I ended up with:

At first, I decided to keep the piece, and not sell it, just for sentimental reasons.  This piece of furniture got me through a very rough first week, and I almost feel like I owe my sanity to it. So, I held on to it and began picking up other projects to fill my time, which eventually led to the opening of my Etsy shop, and my new small business!
  However, when he returned this year, I decided that I had so much furniture around the house, that I would part with it, and it sold to a local buyer from my Etsy shop in just a few weeks. 

This is still a very special piece to me and today on the 4th of July, I find myself looking back on it and thinking about those terrible months when my fiancee was gone and how  Furniture Alchemy  became a part of my life; a trash turned into a treasure.

Happy Independence Day everyone!

Flowers in a Mason Jar

Whenever I go on my weekly thrift store rounds, I always look around for old jars.  Since Annie Sloan Chalk Paint can be mixed to create custom colors, I like to use old Mason jars to mix and store the paint.
Last week I came across a gorgeous old blue Mason jar, and bought it for $2.00!
 I felt like it was just too pretty to for painting, so I stopped at Safeway and bought a $8.00 bouquet of flowers to go in it.
Using a Mason jar as a vase is definitely not a new idea, but it is a GREAT idea! In addition to having the flowers  sitting on my kitchen counter, I've also used it for a staging for all of my latest pictures.
I have some "go to" props I love to use for photo staging, they are all things that I've found around my house or at thrift stores. My favorites are a straw fedora (swiped from my fiancee, who never gets to wear it anymore because I don't want it to get lost!), vintage bicycle bookends, a crate found at a thrift store that I'm now using for an end table in my living room, and this tiny decorative tobacco stick ladder I bought for $3.00 from a colleague at work!

I'm considering keeping this French Linen secretary...as if I need more furniture :-)

I used the flowers here on my vintage crate end table..I also really want to keep this chair ;-)

Finally, on this French Provincial vanity, they add a classic touch. Although I also wanted to keep this vanity, it has already sold and I'm shipping it out this week to NYC

In other shameless Furniture Alchemy news, you can sign up for my bi-monthly newsletter here! I have a new email coming out this week that will feature some of my favorite blogs around the web, trending items on Etsy, as well as information on some pieces that I have!

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