The Sloan Ranger

Gail and I had a dabble today at learning how to paint furniture using Annie Sloan's chalk paint.

A local home furnishing shop called Heidi's was running a three hour workshop on the techniques needed to give new life to old furniture using different paints and brushes, waxes and even a hair dryer to make tired tables, sad seats and boring bookcases more exciting.

It was quite a fun session with Phil the trainer. Besides Gail & I, there were three other ladies in the 'class' and we all seemed to enjoy the experience and knowledge gained.

We were each given a piece of wood and asked to choose a colour. I chose a blue colour and slapped on the colour on a third of the wood. Next Phil gave us all small bowl of white paint which we applied to the middle third. He then gave us a hair dryer and we ran it over the wet paint for around five minutes or so. This made the paint crack.
We then had to choose another colour. So I went for red, as some of the colours seemed to have a French connection, so subconsciously I appeared to have painted the Tricolour.

We then got to use the wax, and rubbing on the dark wax certainly highlighted the cracks and lines in the paint. I also used some sandpaper to give my work of art a bit of distressing to give it an aged look.

On the whole I had a good time, and Gail is now planning to paint all our furniture and anything else that's lying about. Watch out Oscar & Marmalade, as that might include you!