I am loving ASCP (Annie Sloan Chalk Paint) so much that I have purchased about a litre of nearly every colour! Yikes! That is a lot of paint! However, I do have a lot of projects to tackle around the house before I start working on pieces to sell.
Here is a piece I started last week and just finished on Monday.
Before
I bought this from a charity shop for a tenner some months ago. £10 is more than I like to pay for an item from a charity shop, but it was too good to pass up. At first, I didn’t know where I would use this shelf or if I would modify it in any way. I even stuck it up in the loft for a while as I didn’t know when I would get around to painting it or ever using it. Then it hit me – I can use it in the bathroom above the loo, next to the sink. The bottom rail is perfect for hanging hand towels and the shelves are obviously useful for putting things on.
This item has been stained with a very dark brown stain with a slight sheen. Pretty hideous. I thought I might try one of the brighter paint colours on hand and chose Provence.
ASCP - Provence
This paint coordinates really well with my old kitchen cabinets! Ha! As you can see, this paint is quite dark. The ASCP paints tend to dry lighter after application, but then darken up a bit after being waxed. It can look quite shocking and vibrant when using it straight out of the can.
After 1 coat of ASCP in Provence
This is after 1 coat of paint. It is a beautiful shade of blue-green. Unfortunately, some of the stain bled out into the paint (you can see if you look closely). I didn’t know this was going to happen. That is a risk you have to take sometimes with ASCP even though it says on the can that you can put it straight onto varnished pieces. Sometimes it works and sometimes you need to try other methods. I thought it might be ok once I put a 2nd coat of paint on. It was better, but I wasn’t sure, so I put a light coat of clear wax on it before making my mind up as to what I was going to do. Sometimes the wax acts as a barrier and then when you paint on top of that, you can no longer see the bleed.
I also wasn’t too sure if I wanted such a strong colour for my shelf. I find that ironic, from a woman with fuchsia sofas. Because I wasn’t sure about what to do next I put the shelf aside for a few days. It just happened that my sweetheart thought it looked really good the way it was. ‘It would brighten up the bathroom’, as he put it. I had no problem brightening up the bathroom, just not that bright! I was thinking I might mix some of the Provence with Old White to lighten it and paint on top of the darker colour before distressing, but the colour didn’t come out the way I wanted. It came out minty – like a baby colour. So I left the colour as is and distressed it before putting a final coat of wax on it.
This is what it looks like now.
I could tone down the colour a bit by aging it with some dark wax, but for now I like it as it is. By the way, although I am quite capable of using a drill, I will wait until my sweetie can put it up for me. It makes him feel good when he can do things for me. 
