Second hand store treasures

I love little second hand store treasures. They only cost a dollar or two and can be painted up to give them new life, or just left the way they are to create retro decorations to brighten up shelves. Here are some little things I found the other day. I used paint test pots to paint them:

 

 



 

 

 

(I already started painting the frame in the top right)

 

Here are some of the items with cream coloured paint brushed on them to give a rustic shabby chic look. The little jar has some cream paint swirled around the inside, but I still need to add some other colours to make it interesting. I also painted the basket (in the second photo, above) in the same colour and I'm planning to put a lavender plant in it.



Here are the little wooden goblets painted in bright blue:

Here is a ceramic bottle (or vase?) that was dark blue but I didn't take a 'before' photo of it. Its now a lovely purple colour. I brushed the colour on leaving some of the underside showing to make it more interesting.

Old army boxes get a new look

Old army boxes painted in Cherry Red

We collect up all of our old newspapers to use in our log burner, except that in summer they build up into a big pile. I was putting them in a cardboard box, but it overflowed and ended looking like this:

 



In the garage we had some old army boxes that we were using for storage and I thought they'd look great painted red to bring some colour into our living room and tidy up the overflowing paper monster.

The smaller box is older and has some damage but the larger box is in great condition:

 

I bought a test pot of Resene's Cherry Red and mixed it water (50/50) to create a paint wash. I used a paint wash rather than painting over it in undiluted paint because I wanted the old writing to show through. I then took some diluted brown furniture stain and brushed it onto all of the edges and sporadically around the middle to create the impression that the red paint is old and worn. Lastly I used two coats of acrylic gloss spray to seal it and bring out the colour and shine.

And here is the new tidy and colourful paper corner. Both boxes are full of paper and I added some logs on top for decoration. I painted the little heart painting on the shelf to tie in with the red of the army boxes.