Grocery Bag Distressing
Look at this pretty blue side table! I love the robin's egg blue colour and the really shabby chic and distressed look I was able to achieve. And if you love it just as much as I do, then you'll be completely surprised by how I managed to get the look!
This was the original side table. I picked it up at a local yard sale and was really impressed with the condition of it for the price! The only flaw it had was a water ring right where someone placed their coffee cup every morning. Easily fixed with a lick of paint!
I used a very pale blue colour DIY chalk paint (with a teaspoon of water) as a base. I randomly dry brushed sections and then, here's the secret, I immediately dabbed over the area with a plastic bag. The crinkly paint effect it gives is important for a later step.
After letting that layer dry, I used a robin's egg blue DIY chalk paint as my second layer. I wanted the blue to look like it was really peeling off and showing the layers beneath, so I very sparingly dry brushed it on.
Now it's time to distress! Remember that plastic bag trick? This is where it comes in handy. All those random crinkled imprints and thin spots of paint look like such authentic wear and tear when you sand it off. Have you ever sanded something to distress it and just ended up with lots of parallel streaky lines that don't look like real wear and tear? Every randomized thin crinkle of paint is the first to get sanded off, making the wear look truly real, like it's been weathered over time. Just like this!
The original finish on the top of the table had crackled over the years and I really wanted to accentuate that. After sanding down my two very thin coats of paint, I mixed up my own tinted furniture wax. Just add acrylic paint to your wax and mix it up! Keep adding paint until the desired opacity of colour is reached. But remember to work in small areas! The acrylic paint will dry fast and you may not be able to buff darker tints off all the way if you wait too long.
Below you can see how the white furniture wax settled in between the cracks of the original furniture varnish.
How great does that look? The pictures really doesn't do the piece justice. There is just so much texture to the table now, it has so much more personality! With two thin coats of paint and a little elbow grease, (and a plastic bag!), you can transform any piece of furniture into a interesting shabby chic piece that has tons of character!
