Mother Crafter

Vacation Month: Guest Blogger Kathryn from Ugly Ducling Transformations!

Hi everyone! My name is Kathryn and I blog over at uglyducklingtransformations. I’m very excited to be a guest blogger at Mother Crafter today! I started my blog a little over two months ago as a way of sharing my passion for painting and diy projects. So far, the experience has been truly rewarding…   I have learned so much and been inspired by all the other amazingly creative people that I’ve come into contact with.

I live in Vancouver, Canada (the best city in the world!!) with my husband and two children. Today I’m sharing a desk and chair that my daughter inherited from her Omi. This desk had been well loved over the years, and was begging for some paint. For those of you that read my blog regularly, you won’t be surprised to learn that I forgot to take pictures before I started priming and painting!! What can I say… I’m always way too excited to start new projects!! Here’s a pic I took of the underside, once I realized I’d forgotten my camera…

Anyway, I wanted to keep the same color scheme as her dresser, which is the first project that led to the start of Ugly Duckling.

So, first I primed and painted both pieces – 2 coats primer and 3 coats of latex satin. Painting the chair almost drove me bonkers! I would have MUCH preferred to spray paint this finicky little thing, but because I wanted to use the same paint as the dresser, I had no choice but to tough it out with a brush on all those little corners and nooks! I don’t know if any of you have ever used the paint conditioner Floetrol, but it is my best friend when it comes to painting these days. You just need to add a little bit (2-3 tbsp) per 3-4 cups paint. It slows the drying time of the paint and makes it so much easier to go back and correct any mistakes drips before they dry. It also lessens the appearance of brush strokes. I highly recommend it!!

For the top of the desk I chose a grey Martha Stewart chalkboard paint from Michael’s that is very similar to the color (a brown/grey) on the top and sides of my daughters dresser. I applied three coats of this. Then I got out my princess stencils that I found for $2 at Michael’s this summer and got to work stenciling the the desk and chair.

My daughter loves to draw and paint, and over the past year, I don’t think a single day has gone by where she didn’t draw a picture of a princess (I am making a book for her of all her princess drawings for Christmas!!). Sooooo, keeping this in mind, I wanted to create a template of sorts for her to create her own princesses using chalk on her new desk.

Here’s what I came up with:

She loves her new desk and has created her first (of many) chalk princesses!

My 4 year-old artist.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this post – please stop by and visit Ugly Duckling sometime! Thanks so much Vanina for having me!!

Kathryn