Mudcloth Chippy Drawers

You can imagine my excitement when Dixie Belle released a Mudcloth stencil. I am a huge stencil fan and the Mudcloth design is right up my street. 

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Product list:

White Lightning

Sea Spray

Drop Cloth Chalk Mineral Paint

Daisy Chalk Mineral Paint

The Gulf Chalk Mineral Paint

Mudcloth Stencil

Best Dang Wax Clear

Best Dang Wax Black

Premium Chip Brush

La Petite Brush

French Tip Brush

Here's the before of this sweet mini drawers. They're solid and actually very heavy for the size! It's made from some kind of Indian hardwood  - which is actually one of my favourite kinds of furniture styles to paint. A word of warning when painting this type of wood though! It can be very bad for bleed through and often is a very oily wood so prep is the key!

As always, the first step is always to clean your piece with White Lightning. The only exception to this is if your piece is waxed. If this is the case the the wax needs removing first. I have a blog post explaining how to do this here or a YouTube video you can view here.

This rather rancid shot shows how important it is to clean your pieces inside and out! I always remove drawers, turn the piece upside down and give it a thorough clean. 

After I scuff sanded the piece, my base layer was Drop Cloth mixed with Sea Spray to create texture. I used a Premium Chip Brush to apply this as Sea Spray and the stippling action I use to add the mixture can damage those gorgeous bristles on the synthetic brushes. The natural bristles on the premium chip brush also help to create texture.

Once the base layer was dry I added a layer of the colour Daisy. I varied the thickness of the Daisy to allow some of the base layer to peep through. 

I allowed the Daisy to dry and then applied a coat of The Gulf over the top. 

Once the layer of The Gulf was dry, I distressed back the layers of paint with a paint scraper and sandpaper. I like to vary how I distress as I find it keeps it looking more authentically worn and aged. (This piece was painted during a series of lives so I hadn't yet painted the top in this picture).

Now for the Mudcloth stencil!! Look how excited I was!

This is an action shot of me stencilling whilst live on Instagram. I really didn't make things easy for myself as I intentionally didn't remove the handles on this particular piece - mainly because this style lends itself to the less polished and perfect look. I used the colour Drop Cloth which is the same as my base colour to tie the design together. 

I only applied the stencil onto the drawer fronts and around the trim at the base of the unit. Once the stencil had dried I used Best Dang Wax in clear to seal the paint. I used the La Petite brush to apply the wax as it has a pointed end which is perfect for getting into the corners and details.

After the clear wax, I used the French Tip brush to apply Best Dang Wax in black to the corners and edges of the piece.  

I used a dish sponge to remove the excess black wax. I have a YouTube video showing a similar application of brown wax here.

I managed to get a shot of the piece with black wax on one side and not the other. You can see how the black wax adds more depth and dimension to the piece!

Here's the finished piece along with some close ups! Hope this post has been enjoyable to read!

Con x