by Wendy Scheel | Apr 23, 2016 | Sidenote Saturday
My brain wasn’t hitting on all cylinders yesterday. And it should have been. I mean I have a great nights sleep, a casual morning and a filling breakfast. Things weren’t improving by mid morning so I decided to switch gears and paint.
Paint a dresser, not paint something Van Gogh-ish.
On the blog, you have seen this dresser several times with different seasonal décor arranged on top of it.
I bought it from a friend of a friend. It isn’t antique or vintage. It was not hand painted. It was mass produced.
And I liked it.
But, today was the day that I finally took a leap of faith and decided to fall in love with it.
Not trusting my cylinder skipping day, I sent a picture of the dresser to a friend of mine (Karianne from Thistlewood Farms, maybe you have heard of her) 🙂 asking her what her opinion was about painting this piece. She responded:
Hmm….what about a light blue? Or gray (of course)! hahahaha!
Gray it shall be. Thanks for the suggestion Ms. Thistlewood Farms Blogger Extraordinaire.
The handles were easily removed and I lightly sanded the fronts of the drawers.
Trophy from the Miss Mustard Seed milk paint line was my gray color choice. It happened to also be the only gray milk paint I had, so, win-win on that.
At first I was thinking I would only paint the drawer fronts but as the project progressed, I felt that the entire dresser, not including the the top needed to be painted.
One coat of paint easily covered the two drawer dresser. I then finished it with a top coat of MMS Hemp Oil.
It took me less than 2 hours from start to finish to finish the dresser makeover.
Putting the before and after side by side, makes me giddy happy that I painted yesterday. A sign of love.
Have a lovely Saturday!
Wendy
by Wendy Scheel | Mar 24, 2016 | DIY
Sometimes the Universe sends me subtle hints. Per the definition of subtle, these hints can be “delicately complex and understated”. And I tend to discard them.
So, the Universe stops, grabs me by the shoulders and screams that hint directly into my face. It gets all up in my business and makes me listen.
The hints have been coming for a while, but the other day the direct hit happened.
I had settled into my morning routine of Mt. Dew, oatmeal and firing up my IPhone.
Reading my daily dose of Thistlewood Farms, KariAnne was sharing a wonderful piece of advice her mother had given her. (Read her lovely story here.)
It was if her Mother was speaking to me also. She told her that “Comparison is the thief of joy”. I googled this quote because I was thinking if her Mother pulls perfectly timed sayings like that, she is probably famous or written a book or down right brilliant.
As it turns out, her Mother is brilliant because her timing was impeccable when quoting Theodore Roosevelt.
Take a quick second and read a little deeper into this quote:
When you compare yourself to others, you know all the dirty details of your situation or the problems with what you’ve created but only the seemingly positive surface information about them or their work. Don’t hold yourself up to some outside vague standard of greatness. -lifehacker.com
This quote needed to stay front and center in my blogging/entrepreneurial life.
So I made a sign. A wood sign. Large and spelled out so I don’t forget sign.
I bought an 8 foot tongue and groove pine board from Home Depot and cut it into three 18 inch lengths with my handy dandy table saw. I even have enough board left over for some smaller signs.
Next, I simply ran a wood glue line in the groove of one of the pieces and inserted the tongue side of the next board. Repeating this process one more time gave me a finished 15 x 18 inch sign.
Using my go to milk paint line, I picked the color Linen from Miss Mustard Seed. The finish on this was to be a whitewash, so I combined one teaspoon of the Linen milk paint powder to four teaspoons of water.
After mixing the paint until it was nice and smooth, I brushed the entire front of the board with the mixture.
Because of how thin the paint was, drying time was minimal. I would guess 15 minutes.
The next step was to draw with pencil the quote onto the board. This quote was easily divided into three phrases. COMPARISON on the top board, IS THE THIEF OF on the middle board, and JOY with fancy olive branch swirls on the bottom board.
Once I liked how everything looked, I traced my pencil marks with black and gold permanent markers.
Final touches will put hanging hardware on the back of the sign. For now it is sitting in my family room as a daily reminder and to let the Universe know that I listened and understand.
Wendy
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