I picked up this very charming chest at our local British Heart Foundation furniture shop. But I always have a ethical dilemma whilst shopping there - I think that they are too expensive! This particular chest was about £25 more than I really wanted to pay for it, as it was obvious it would need quite a bit of work. But buy it, I did.
The chest was obviously handmade, a typical piece of country furniture, somewhat crude, but very useful nevertheless.
Firstly, I had to chop a bit off the drawers so they fitted better, I then rubbed it down, primed it and painted it with 2 coats of eggshell. I decided this year that I would 'make do and mend' with the stuff that I (or Mr. P) already have. As mentioned in a previous post, Mr. P used to have his own painting and decorating business, so we have a garage full of paint, but not the cream eggshell that I wanted. I mixed some Farrow & Ball - Mouse's Ear (how lovely is that name?) - to some white eggshell until I got the right(ish) colour.
Then the fun bit, to decorate the drawer fronts. Unfortunately procrastination set in and I spent a week trying to decide how to go about this.
Should I cover the drawers with these lovely vintage style scrapbook papers by one of my favourite designers, Anna Griffin
The problem with these being that they are 12" square, and the drawers, rather annoyingly, were 12 1/4" wide.I then sought inspiration from these
but as there are 10 drawers, I thought this might look over-fussy and perhaps a more uniform approach would be more pleasing.
Returning to my beloved Anna Griffin and one of my favourite stamps, I decided to stamp and emboss the design on some gorgeous mulberry tissue paper and just applied it with good old PVA (which I just love and buy it by the gallons).
A ta-dah moment
Sorry about the image quality (taking a photo of a tall, slim object proved impossible, probably why I don't take any photos of myself - who am I trying to kid, lol!).
In case you wondered what the 'E' stood for (as did Kim) - well I haven't completed the H, O or M yet, but have used another Anna Griffin stamp to do this also).
Really liking the red/pink scheme going on here. Half the pinky 'we are friends again' throw is all sewn up, but I probably need a few more squares.
Well all I need now is Mr. P's assistance in moving the drawers to my new craft area upstairs and to fill them with stashy delights. Although, I've got quite accustomed to the drawers sitting in the middle of my still uncompleted living-room.
Well, if you are still here, all I can do is wish you are wonderful, sunny weekend.
Jak x
