Since it's Friday, and I usually get the urge to show furniture on Fridays, here is one of my latest completed items. Please allow me to introduce ..... The Wedgwood Dresser.
You may or may not remember this dresser's humble beginning.
It's a very solid, heavy, well-made dresser from a good maker. It just has dated styling ... which makes it perfect for a beauty makeover with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint.
I took my inspiration for this piece from the applied carvings on the drawer fronts. They remind me of applied decorations on Wedgwood dishes and cameos, so it seemed natural to do this piece in ASCP Old White and Duck Egg ... perfect Wedgwood colors.
When I painted the first coat of Duck Egg on the carvings, the details didn't stand out quite like I wanted them to ... so I dry-brushed a bit of Old White onto them. Now they're perfect!
The dresser had ALMOST all of its original hardware ... the only missing piece was ONE eye-bolt for one drawer handle. (The handle that appears to be missing in the 'Before' photo was in one of the drawers.)
I knew that I wanted to keep the original handles if I possibly could. A quick trip to Lowes yielded some handles with eye-bolts that worked perfectly with the original handles. I'll save the parts of the new handles that I didn't use for another project later.
I used a texture technique on the top of this dresser ... two coats of slightly-thickened Duck Egg ASCP ... then I waxed and sanded and and polished and waxed again ... and the effect has depth and a silky smooth, satiny shine!
(The paintbrush is in this photo to trick my camera's auto-focus function ... it couldn't focus on the shiny dresser top at the angle I wanted to shoot without it. Oh, the things we have to do with these new-fangled cameras.)
On the body of the dresser, I lightly distressed corners and edges and feet to simulate a lifetime of use and care. No fakey, patchy, random distressing for this girl ... every mark and wear spot can tell a story.
Now that this dresser is finished, it's in the pile of things that are staged to go with me to the Luckett's Spring Market, May 19 and 20. I have one more project to finish, then I'll have everything ready for the show ... all I will have to do is decide how to arrange everything into my 10 x 10 foot space.
