Sunset Coast: foliage

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Painted Vintage Furniture: The Leaf Chair!

Good morning campers! Looks like the Sunset Coast is going to have a beautiful spring day.. I thought I'd share a project, a painted chair I did last fall. Ok, wrong season, but it's a good day to share a project and this is my blog so bear with me. ( I almost wrote 'bare' with me... not a good visual!)

I'm going to call this picture the before shot. There are so many of these nice vintage and antique oak chairs out there. I didn't have a before photo of my chair because I did this furniture makeover 'BB'--before blogging. I was just tired of the brown and did I mention? I'm in an orange phase.. just love it here and there throughout the house lately.

I began by lightly sanding the wood chair. It was something I picked up at a thrift store a long time ago; it was time for a change. I don't spend much time sanding--just enough to rough up the surface so the paint holds.

Next, I base painted the whole chair. I had some red latex paint and my standby 'burnt orange'. You can see the Ralph Lauren orange color here on my painted patio chair. First I painted on the red paint, then while it was still wet, I painted on the orange paint so they mixed together , but not totally blended. The paint has a variegated look, great on furniture.. walls, not so much. Brush the paint in one direction to get this look.

Inspiration Leaves from Liquid Amber Tree

For the leaves, I went outside and collected leaves from my 'liquid amber' sweetgum tree. ( I told you it was autumn when I did this!) I collected a variety of leaves. Some more red, some yellow, some with green and brown. They also varied in size for the next step.

After the orangish-reddish base coat was dry, I placed the leaves on the chair in some kind of pleasing composition. Here's the little secret about 'drawing' the leaves. Ready? I traced the leaves onto the chair with chalk! If I didn't like it, I rubbed off the chalk and did it over.

Then I loaded up my painting palette, ( 'palette'= sheet of aluminum foil) with lots of colors that were in the fall leaves.. greens, reds, oranges, golds, yellows, purple, and white. I used those 2oz acrylic craft paints.

I just started painting, looking at individual leaves and mimicking their designs and colors. They didn't have to match perfectly, because nature is all different too. Every leaf was individual and unique.

I used the same colors to paint the chair back and bring out the details and added more leaves. Lastly, I waxed the whole thing with my Fiddes and Sons Supreme Wax Polish and buffed it to a nice sheen.

TA DAAAAAA!!.. My painted fall leaf chair was done!