Thursday, August 26, 2010

Altered Cafe

Last week Angela and I went thrift store shopping which was amazing! We bought sooooo much! Well I found this sign for 49 cents and had to have it. I sort of started or rather wanted to start a coffee/café theme in my kitchen.


However the colors in my kitchen include blue, brown, orange and white. So I needed to alter this sign to fit well in my kitchen. My walls are blue so I didn’t want much blue in this sign. The mug on it has some blue in it….perfect….now I have to change all the black. I figured I could paint the frame in a white wash then around the mug I would paint orange and add in some brown detail. So to start I taped off the chalk board and mug area and used some white paint we had left over from when we moved into our house. I dipped my brush in water before dipping it into the paint to water it down. After 3 coats I got the coverage I was looking for. Then I distressed the edges with a sanding brick.


Next I removed the tape. I did have some paint that got under the tape over the chalk board area so I used some nail polish remover to clean it off. Then I used the same white paint without adding water as a primer to the black background and used a heating tool to dry it.


Next I began mixing colors to get an orange that I liked..to be honest it’s a little brighter than I was looking for but I’m not too worried about it. Now the surface is very smooth which left me with brush strokes and removal of paint of areas that were still wet. To remedy this I used my heating tool to dry it (after I put one coat of orange paint on) and I appliedpaint in small areas and dried it with the heating tool then moved on..this really worked out well. Then I just used some brown paint and randomly formed a design. Finally I used a brown ink pad to ink around the distressed edges. Before I knew it I was done.


I think it turned out really well. I think this is the first time I really took an item to alter it and it turned out well without me getting frustrated and giving up…lol

No comments:

Post a Comment