Sweet Salvage-Color Stories

 I always enjoy my visits to Sweet Salvage. If you are a fan of rusty, crusty iron or shabby, chippy paint you will love the displays that they put together every month!

 I love the mix of industrial and super girly!!! 

 Sparkly crystal and tarnished silver just make my heart go pitter patter!!

Every month there is always something I regret passing on. This teal blue scale was this month's regret.

 Are these not the cutest little shoe forms you have ever seen????

 This whole wall is yummy!! Julie does those wood spool clocks better than anyone I have ever seen!

 These pillows are drool worthy too!

 I love everything in this pic. I could totally live with a modern french country look.

Look at that sweet face!!

 Love it!

 This divided tray is perfectly displayed. I bought a new one at Harbor Freight. I'm going to try and see if I can get it to look like it's been around a while! (I'll let you know how it goes)

 I love this old xylophone used as a tray!!!

 I am a fan of wicker. Not everybody is, but I really like the outdoorsy, beachy feel it gives a room.

And of course if you pair with brown transferware AND ironestone AND Ivy... well it's drool worthy to me.

Amazing architectural window. If I didn't already have one... well, you know.

  You may have noticed that the title of this post was Sweet Salvage-Color Stories, and you are wondering "Hey Karen, where's all the color???" Yes, you have seen a bit of teal, and green, and yellow and of course all the wonderful whites and neutrals, but I haven't really shown any color yet. Guess what? I'm not going to either!! LOL!! Everytime I framed up a shot with all the reds and oranges and purples and blues my palms started sweating and I had a hard time breathing!! (Just kidding!) But, I am defintely NOT a bright color girl. 

Dawn, from Bohemian Valhalla on the other hand, IS a color girl and she has 3 posts full of Sweet Salvage in all its colorful glory on her blog right now. I found it really cool to look at "Sweet" from her point of view because it is so different from mine. If all you get to see is the pics, you might think we were at two different stores, but it just goes to show how there is something for everyone and people can definitely see things differently!

Painted Chair Makeover-Before and After

Well I finally tried my hand painting an entire chair with chalk paint and I have to say... I will totally do this again!!! It is a lot of work, but I was very happy with the results!!!

As you can see it started out with wonderful bones. I love these channel back style chairs but the fabric was dated and well,  just not my style!

It had a raised chenille type texture so I wasn't sure if it was going to work because I had always heard that flat weaves work best.

After a lot of research on line and many opinions on paint formulas I decided to forgo the fabric medium method and just dive in with my home made chalk paint. I was hoping to achieve a leather like appearance so the fabric medium wasn't needed to keep the paint soft.

This is what it looked like after the first coat of paint. As you can see, the fabric really sucked up the paint on the first coat. I did use a lot of water though because I read that was better than applying really thick coats of paint.

This is after 3 coats of paint. As you can see, the texture of the fabric really came up. At this point it was very stiff and uncomfortable to the touch. The next step... sanding!!!!

I took my hand sander and went over the whole think using an #80 grit paper to start and then switching to #120. Some of the green fabric started to show through, the the texture of the paint completely changed. It really started to feel like leather at this point.

I put one more coat of paint on it and used AS clear wax, and then dark wax to bring out the texture. I love how it looks and feels like tooled leather now!! I worked the wax in well and made sure to wipe off all the extra so nothing would come off when someone sits in it!

Here it is in my space at Rusty Saturday!! I painted the wood an off-white and I just love the finished result. If you have been afraid to try painting fabric chairs, I say go for it!!! (Just don't use your grandmothers heirloom chair!!)