CREATING ART THE AMATEUR WAY

There are lots of interesting and exciting things on the market to decorate kitchen hardware.  I have had my reliable (fingers crossed) fridge/freezer for eighteen years and it is still going strong (again, fingers crossed).  A while ago I stuck ivy stickers around the edge of the fridge door to hide rust spots and today used fruit stickers to cover even more little blemishes appearing in the door.  It is  a good deal better to look at than rust.  The bottom of the freezer door is rusting so I am considering sticking ivy on it, growing upwards this time. The transfers are by Decalmile. 

I had a plain wooden winebox stored in the bottom shelf of my computer work station for years with just cables and various computer stuff in it.  One day, desperate to decorate something, I decided to give it a makeover.  After all, I had decorated the work station.  So, I painted it, stuck transfers on it, and gave it a varnish.  It is still used for the same purpose but it was fun doing it. 

One day I was looking around to see what else I could decorate and my eyes landed on a plain wooden knife block in my kitchen.  I gave it a coat of green chalk paint, let it dry, and gave the green paint a bit of a sand to give it that rustic appearance.  Then I stuck bits of unused transfers on it that I had left over from other projects and finally a coat of varnish.  Years later, it still looks the same.  Decorated wood knife block

Years ago I bought some flat-packed pine furniture.  I knew that at some point I would become bored with it, and I did, during the Covid madness.  I decorated my living room's sideboard and a chest of drawers with a white and baby-blue chalk paint, using masking tape for the stripes. I added the quirky touch with different coloured knobs.  I also decorated the drawer of a large coffee table that I have. The chalk paint was waxed over with Annie Sloan white wax, rubbing on and off to achieve a blotchy, not solid, effect.  

A while ago I went crazy, it was during the Covid madness and I ended up decorating everything I could lay my hands on, except the cat — and he came pretty close to it.  This was one project that I really went to town on and I love the result, even now.  It's chalk painted, using Annie Sloan paint, and the top  and legs are varnished to protect the surface. I used clear Annie Sloan wax on the sides.  The design was created using protective masking tape.   How it began... 😀  Alfie, my elderly Ragdoll cat, gets everywhere!

Nothing in my home is safe from me decorating it.  I wanted to buy some designer cafetières for my kitchen and could not find a single thing of interest, so I decorated the ones that I have. They are stainless steel with thermal walls so they never get hot to the touch. I used rub-on transfers that pretty much obliterated anything showing behind them. The black and copper cafetiere got painted over with a coat of black chalk-paint first. These are the results. The top one was all stainless steel and two types (patterns) of opaque rub-on transfers applied directly to metal.  It's was a bit tricky around the handle and spout but perfectly doable.  This cafetiere, as you can see was originally black and copper and had become rather scruffy so, as I mentioned, I gave it a coat of black chalk paint and then applied a transfer on top.   They both have lasted years as they were and only recently have started to look a little shabby.  I might just decorate them aga...

I went through a decorating madness phase and when I ran out of furniture and pots to decorate, I decided my grey plastic dustbin was boring and deserved the treatment, so I set to work on it.  I gave it a good clean, of course, then I painted it with several coats of chalk paint.  When that was well and truly dry, I stuck transfers on it and gave it several coats of varnish/lacquer.  That was a few years ago now and it still looks good.  The only problem was that it had to be protected from the elements for quite a long time so I started decorating the dustbin (trash can, garbage can, whatever you call it) the day the men collected the rubbish.   Here it is: