Finders Keepers Friday – Another Frenchy Find

Tags

finders keepers friday, french decor, french graphic

I popped in to Vandusen Gardens earlier this week for the sole purpose of getting tickets for the big Easter Egg Hunt they have every year. When I found out about this big event last year,  the tickets were already sold out, so this year I made sure to mark it on my calendar. While I was there, I just happened to notice they have a new gift shop… {I’ve always loved the gift shop at Vandusen, especially at Christmas, as they bring in some wonderful decorations} so I thought I’d take a peak. They had some fabulous home decor – french mercantile pillows, footstools, tea towels, great vintage inspired clocks, and of course some wonderful garden pots. I would have taken pictures of all these amazing things to share with you, but I forgot my phone at home! Here is one item that I couldn’t resist:

These were on display in many different shapes and sizes, but I like this one the best. I think it’s meant to be for a plant, but I’m using it for these:

I can totally visualize this on a piece of furniture!!

Bar Stool Replica

Tags

Bar stool, Business, french graphic, Furniture, Home and Garden, Paint, Seating, Shopping, Stools

I rescued this bar stool from the curb a few months ago and it’s been sitting in my garage giving me the evil eye every time I walk in there. I decided to look for bar stools on Pinterest (I’m so addicted!!) and found so many I absolutely loved! BUT, I REALLY loved one that I saw with a french graphic on the top with black legs, so I decided I would try to replicate it, but give it my own twist as well.

Here’s how mine ended up:

And here’s how it started…. sort of – as usual I forgot to take a picture of it before I started priming/painting the top… but the legs are the original ugly green here. Before the top was white with stickers all over it.

First, you may notice that there are some rungs missing… well, instead of going to the effort and cost of replacing them, I decided to just fill the holes. These little buggers were quite deep, so I used some balled up masking tape and stuffed it in and put wood filler over top. Then I sanded and primed the areas I filled.

I spray painted the legs in Krylon black satin (thankfully this weekend was sunny, so I could get outside on the grass… Yeah!)

For the top, I didn’t bother sanding much – there were some bumps and grooves in the wood, but my plan was to distress the surface anyway, so these would add to the overall look I was going for. I didn’t prime the surface either; it had previously been painted white and was covered with stickers, so I just removed them and got to painting with my antique white Behr paint.

Then onto the image. I picked this one from the graphics fairy and got to transferring with my carbon paper. The transferred image came out really light, but I was able to see enough to get the outline started with my paint pen.

As I was working, my paint pen blobbed out on me and created this mess, which wouldn’t wipe away… soooo I decided to scrap this part of the graphic (which was tedious anyway) and finish the rest. I later sanded down the part I wanted to get rid of and re-painted it.  Here’s how it ended up looking… I think I like it better without the top part anyway!

I distressed a little and put some minwax finishing paste on the top.

Voila!

Have a great day!

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