Wednesday 30 April 2014

Autentico Chalk Paint to the Rescue!

For the last 2 years the only paint I have used for my furniture re-cycling projects has been Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint - which I absolutely adore - I love the versatility of milk paint, and although I have had the odd issue, all the results have always turned out well in the end.  However this 'baby' caused me some problems - I used filler where the veneer was missing and that worked fine with the Milk Paint, but the overall finish on the veneer was so rough despite sanding and using hemp oil I just wasn't getting the finish I wanted. 



There was no other option than to go for a lovely thick chalk paint to cover the bad finish on this chest of drawers, so I went to see my friend Elaine at  Vintage Attic Living  in Sevenoaks (I must do a post about her gorgeous shop sometime!) she is a new Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint Retailer, and also stocks Autentico Chalk Paint, I have only ever used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and I wanted to try the Autentico so I could compare the 2 chalk paints - Conclusion: I prefer Autentico! It was fun to use chalk paint again and although I did need 3 coats in the end to get the finish I wanted, I didn't find it so 'gloopy' as ASCP.  The shade I chose was 'Stone' which is a lovely beigey/grey.  after a gentle sand with fine  sand paper, I finished it with hemp oil, which gave it a lovely satin finish, and is so much easier to use than furniture wax!



Whilst visiting Vintage Attic Living, I bought some lovely napkins to make some decoupaged knobs for this chest of drawers, it's years since I tried decoupage and I was pleased with the results, I turned these ordinary pine knobs into something interesting and a little 'different' First of all I painted them with Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint in the shade 'Linen' as I wanted to match the background coulour of the paper napkin and it also made a great contrast with the main colour of the chest of drawers.  I then used Modge Podge to stick the cut out sections of the napkin to the top of the knobs, and finished the whole knob with a couple of coats of Polyvine Decorators Varnish with a 'Dead Flat' finish.


Going back to using Chalk Paint has not affected my love of Milk Paint, it's just made me realise I have many options and each re-cycling project is totally different, assessing the existing finish that you are about to paint over before starting is very important.  This will definitely NOT be a one off, I will be using Atentico Chalk Paint again!
CJ