Sunset Coast: acrylic paint

Good day! After a horrible week in the news.. Boston bombs, West, Texas explosions, floods in Illinois, etc, I needed some paint therapy! Wishing everyone who had a tragedy this week some healing and peace. I just finished up painting this pretty vintage jewelry box. If you're out scrounging at thrift stores or flea markets, you've probably seen those old, kinda ugly, wood jewelry boxes. Well, they're easy to paint and make them better than new. They were really well made and worth saving. This one even has a working music box that plays 'The Theme from Love Story'!

I've been seeing those great painted dressers lately in many different colors all over the bloggyland.A few have been in a mustard shade that I have been wanting to try out on something. I can't possibly lug one of those big bureaus home by myself, but I can get the look with this miniature version, a musical jewelry box. So let's see how I did it! Shall we??? (Don't answer that, just keep reading...)

Sand it! Just a light sanding to rough up the wood using medium sandpaper.

Clean off the sanding dust with a damp cloth.

Prime it! I like this stuff. Zinser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 is a good water based primer. I used some blue painter's tape to mask off parts I didn't want paint on.

Marbelize the top! It's easy and I'm going to walk you through it so you can use this technique on bigger pieces.

I used those little 2 oz. bottles of acrylic craft paint. I put out 3 colors--gray, white and black. You could skip the gray, but I had it. You could use other shades like browns or greens, depending on the color of marble you're going after.

Grab a scruffy looking brush and dab it into a couple of the colors. Now start dabbing it on the box top in a diagonal pattern. Keep picking up more white, or black or gray on the brush. Wipe off the brush occasionally on a rag so the colors don't just come out gray. Keep moving across the box until it's all covered.

Wipe off the brush again and blend the colors together until you like how it looks. Don't overwork it or it will just all be one color. You can still add more white or tiny bits of black and blend those in too.

Next, you're going to add the marble veins. You can look at some real marble or just use this method.

Using a small liner brush, dip into some white paint. Work while the top is still wet and drag the brush. The brush is almost lying down sideways. You're getting white paint on, but also dragging a line into the wet paint.

Paint the lines in a diagonal, squiggly-criss cross, X pattern. If you hold the brush lightly it works best. Then add some little branches off the white lines. I hope this makes sense when you see the picture. If you mess up, just stipple over the whole thing again. I like the lines to continue off the edge and not stop in the middle. Don't want it to look like lightening bolts .

Next, you add some black lines. My lines sort of shadow the white lines. Use the black sparingly. (You might notice in the picture below that it is different than the one above. I didn't like the darkness of the painting so I just started all over, adding more white.)

Use your dry scruffy brush and mottle the lines a little, here and there if you want.

I used the same marble technique for the bottom molding on the jewelry box.

YAY! You made it through the marbelizing! Now onto the easy gold painting.

I started again with 3 shades of gold and mustard paint and some white. I used a flat paint brush and applied paint to the sides and drawers. It needed 2 coats, so the first was just getting some color on there as a base.

For the second coat, dip your paint into a couple of the gold colors, slather it on, add white paint, slather more.. Mess around until you like it! ( Don't you love my detailed instructions?)

Distress the gold painted sides and drawer by lightly sanding the edges. See what I mean in the picture below?

I decided that the little drawer pulls needed some color.. something to highlight them. I used some teal paint, then lightly brushed them with robin's egg blue to bring out the details.

One final step, I rubbed on some Fiddes and Sons Wax. When it was dry, I buffed it with a soft cloth, to a nice sheen. I found the wax on Ebay and it's my favorite furniture finish lately.