While I’ve been interested in painting lately, I’ve also picked up on my eye for gaudy French style decor. Check out these beauties:

I felt I could make these pieces more relevant and practice some painting techniques at the same time.

I had a new color- Navy Blue. I tried drilling some holes in the candle holder, to place my paint brushes in, but that proved to be a disaster, so I knocked out all of the holes. I painted the candle holder with two coats of blue.

While I was painting this piece with the first coat, I saw that I needed to try dry brushing. This is where you barely have any paint on your brush when painting with a second color. It accents the high spots, just like distressing does, but you are adding another layer of paint instead of rubbing paint off.

It took me a day to decide what the secondary color should be. This blue really reminded me of my mother, and how she loves pottery and home decor that is white and blue, so white it was:

Next was the book end. Another new color I had picked out was a gray off white. (I picked up a china hutch on our local classifieds site, and have been pondering what color of white to paint it, and I think this color will be perfect.)

I wanted to accent the low points on this one, and since I had more black wax left over from the Little Pie Safe, I used it.

Using a chunky wax brush, I loaded some black wax on, and jammed the wax into those crevices, working my way back and forth until a good layer was on the piece. I let it sit for a few minutes, and then wiped off the excess.

And lastly was the French Container. This one looked a tiny bit more masculine, and I wanted to try using a white wax, so I painted two layers of gray:

I’ve seen videos of how to mix your own tinted wax, so I gave it a try. I used Dixie Belle’s Best Dang Wax with their off white “Fluff” chalk paint.

Using the same method of applying wax as described above, I applied the wax and wiped it off:

Here’s all of the before and after photos:

What do you think?

With Love, Erika Nora