Sneak Peek! A Magic Box, A Painted Chair, Martha Stewart and Me

Confession time!

Confession #1 I used to be scared of Martha.  Although uniformly wonderful, her projects intimidated me.  Back in the day, they seemed a tad...intense.  I am a fundamentally lazy character, and tend to eschew anything with more than a handful of steps.  I know I'm not alone in this.

Confession #2  I love Martha.  LOVE her.  I believe she is brilliant and I don't care who knows it, so there.  More importantly, I'm no longer scared.  (Although I know she could still take me in a cage fight.)

So what happened between Confession #1 and Confession #2?  Partly, I matured.  Example: I now have an attention span of twenty-three whole minutes!  Another thing that happened: a line of wicked cool Martha Stewart crafting products - easy enough for intimidated crafters like yours truly.

The other day, callooh, callay, Plaid offered to send me some.  (Gee, they really had to twist my arm.)  I have a very fun jewelry tutorial coming up in a few days - a spookified necklace project I know you will love.  Want a sneak peek?

You know you do.  Okay...

BOO!

But for today, in the spirit of Martha and my new maturity, I thought I would show you how I decided to face my fear and tackle something...intense.  Do you like my calavera chair?  It's my first ever painted furniture attempt.

Read on for the whole story behind this skully seat...



See, I found this drab old rocking chair left out on the curb.  Broken into several pieces, unwanted, unloved.  My husband magicked it back together, primed, then did a coat of peacock-colored spray paint.

I googled some references for calavera skulls.  Straining my drawing "skills" to breaking point, I did a pencil sketch, then laid down the black-and-white basics.

I was juuuust about to start adding colorful details, using some no-name craft paints from a jumbled box of crap I keep under the kitchen counter:

And then the enchanted box arrived from Plaid.   Wanna see what they sent?

Whoa.  I tossed aside the no-name crap and broke out the fab new-formula Martha craft paints, which I had been itching to try.


I  began to add colors...loverly, Martha-approved colors...with tasty names like Granny Smith and Carrot.

So that is a glimpse of me conquering fear, and how my peacock-colored chair got its colorful plumage.

It's still a chair in progress.  In measured, twenty-three-minute bursts, I'm working on a bed of roses around the skull...

Eventually each rose will be painted red like the two in the bottom right corner.  In the end the chair will get a clear coat of sealer, and I will feel very accomplished and grown up.  (Update: to see a pic of the finished red roses, check this post.)

Hope you guys will come by next time, when I post my spookified necklace tutorial...

Nothing to be scared of, I promise!  It only has a couple of steps.  See you then!

Disclosure: paints were provided as part of a paid campaign with Plaid Crafts and Blueprint Social. All opinions, projects and shortcomings are entirely my own.