Frida vanity table, repurposed furniture

This week without any previous planning I ended up repurposing a little girl vanity into a Frida inspired vanity table.

Here is the story: I love going to thrift stores. They are big treasure hunts. With a little effort and a little imagination you really can score some great stuff there. I picked up this table probably 6 months ago. It was already customized by the previous owner, complete with someone’s name on it.

I bought it with my daughter in mind, but without a specific idea of what to do with it. This happens to me a lot. I get drawn to something without knowing why, and it’s months later that it all comes together. So if you feel the same, you are not alone. My ideas don’t come to me at the moment I want them. They come when they come. In this particular occasion the idea came after visiting a craft store on the other side of town called Scraps of Love. I picked up a Frida stencil there by one of my favorite artist Kathy Cano-Murillo aka Crafty Chica. I came home and got to work.

Materials:

Paint ( I used Behr: Flirt Alert for the red and Hacienda Blue for the blue)

Plaster of Paris (for making chalk paint)

Brushes

Painter’s tape

Chalk paint recipe: 1/3 cup water + 1/3 cup Plaster of Paris. Mix these two well. Add 1 cup of paint. Mix it all well.

I painted the majority of the surface red.

I added decorations along the way. I penciled some simple flowers then I used yellow acrylic paint to color it.

Living in Arizona is helpful, I didn’t have to wait too long for the paint to dry in order to move on.

I couldn’t wait to get to the stencil part. I was so anxious to see how it’s all going to look.

To make my work easier I taped the stencil with painter’s tape in each of the corners. There are still small imperfections after I added paint, but that’s the joy of handmade.

I had to wait a little bit to make sure the paint is mostly dry before pulling the stencil.

I added a few marks to Frida for definition. And now Maggie (my daughter) has a new vanity. I am happy with how it all came out. I actually promised to paint her entire room. Soooo….keeping busy.