Painting Furniture: A Panda Chair

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Do you ever start out a project with a vivid image in your head and it turns out EGG-zactly as you imagined? Well, I didn’t quite make it this time, and the ending wasn’t quite the picture perfect vision I started with, at least when compared to what I first imagined. But, that’s O.K. More often than not, the end product is an altered version of the plan. Sometimes, it evolves. Sometimes, it, well, lays before you like a lump of dry clay that just wouldn’t form in your hands… and painting furniture is just like that sometimes!

This particular project involved these chairs:

School room seats. Hard seats. Hard seats that little bodies didn’t like.

So, Mom to the rescue. (Ha. Mom’s just tryin to rescue herself from the wiggles and unattached cushions that were prone to flyin around the room at the most unexpected and inopportune moments.)

First mission: Paint. White. Enamel. Sleek. Purdy…

Step 1: Sand

Step 2: Christen your new Purdy XL Cub
(Have I mentioned how much I love this brush?)

I keep reading that this is what you want your brush to look like…

Funny. This is what mine always seems to look like…

Anyhoo…

Step 3: Draw selected design. Scan into computer. Blow it up. Print it out on cardstock. Cut around perimenter and trace design onto back of chair.

Fill in Details.

(That is unless you’re extraordinarily smart and have Graphite paper layin around…)

Step 4: Drink lots of Diet Mt. Dew to prepare
for hand painting Panda onto back of chair.

Step 5: Take a BIG Sigh, cuz you finished

without completely wreckin it.

Tenuous moments not withstanding.

Painting furniture can be fun and sometimes surprise the heck out of you…

So there they are. Ode to Kung Fu Panda. This project did not start out with visions of bears and bugs. I drew flowers and birds and ducks and trees, none of which felt “right”. We needed something that said “Boy”. Well, at least maybe, “Gender Neutral”…

Stay tuned for the, ahem, upholstery “lesson”.