What I'm Working On Wednesday

Here's a picture of a painted lampshade that was in a shop several years ago. The pictures I have were taken at Christmas time so please disregard the bow and such. 

 I really regret not buying this lamp. It's large, and that would be good because I tend to buy too many small things. I checked recently and it was gone. sigh.

I've heard designers say "buy what you love and you'll find a place for it" and I'm sure that would be true in this case. Like I said, I really regret passing it by.

I'm on the lookout for a similar lamp and shade at local thrift shops and garage sales so I can try to paint it like this one. The search is on!

But that's a future project, and here's my current one... Down in McKinney recently, I took some pictures of the front window at the Gray Living store.

I love the white pottery with the handles and dark aged spots in the cracks and crevices...

They looked kind of familiar. When I got home I went looking in one of my storage spots up in the top of the cabinets. See the red pottery piece up there?

I thought I might be able to paint it an aged-white color, like the ones in the Gray Living window. I decided to use One-Step paint by Amy Howard. If anything will stick to slick pottery, this stuff will. They don't pay me to use this stuff, but they should! I buy my paint at a shop in McKinney, but I heard Ace Hardware carries it too. I've even used One-Step on metal before, like when middle daughter and I painted her chandelier here.

Before I painted this piece white, I decided to paint it black first to block out the red when I distress it. I'm hoping that will work...we'll see.

 I never really liked it in red and had considered donating this piece. I stuck it up in the cabinet a few weeks back while I made a decision. Now I'm so glad I hesitated because I'm really curious to see if the paint works on it!

I let it dry for a couple hours then took some more pictures. I'm going to let it dry overnight, to ensure the paint adheres well, before I start painting it white.

I use a lot of things from around the kitchen when I paint. Pint glass jars are my favorite way to paint small projects. I just dip my brush into the jar while I'm painting and cap the jars while I'm between coats.

I buy the white plastic caps at Walmart and just use a marker to note the brand and color of the paint. If I use the metal caps they come with, I put a baggie over the jar before I cap it. This keeps the paint from sticking to the lid and makes it easier to open and close the jars. 

In addition, I also use the freezer baggies to wrap up my brush between painting with them. You don't have to freeze the brushes or anything else that you might have heard. Just put the brush in a freezer baggie and get as much of the air out as you can. I leave these for days without washing them out when I'm working on projects. It might not work for you, but it works well for me. 

 Both of these brushes have chalk paint on them. I've used them for about 4 days now without washing them out. When I take them out of the freezer baggie, I throw the messy bag away and then wrap the brush in a new one when I'm done painting. We buy the BIG packs of Ziplocks at Costco or Sams.

So that's as far as I got today on this piece. In addition, I painted my favorite victim, the rolling bookcase, again. Yep, coat 2,647! It's back to white, and now waiting for some wax to finish it off, and then it gets two hooks for each side and it'll be done (maybe) for good.

This Friday is going to be "Finish It Friday" for the five projects I've got going on. Hope you'll come back then and see how they turn out.

Thanks for dropping in!