Vintage Floral Wall Art and how Kilz nearly Killed My Project

Tonight Mr. Big [Family/small apartment] went to the grocery store and bought his second case of fire logs in under 2 weeks.  We've been having great family time each night around the fire while Cutie Girl gives Daddy singing lessons.  So far she's taught him Doe, Rae, Me - but seems to have lost him after that.  Needless to say our teen boys have discovered new uses for their earbuds while all of this is going on.  Girlfriend even came out of her room and asked who was dying...

So, onto the reason for my blog post tonight.  I have a "Blog Crush" on Sawdust & Embryos and anxiously await each one of their new projects.  Quite a while ago (like back in 2010!) Beth posted about a Floral Decorative Thingy she bought at a thrift store for $4.99.  I loved what she did with it so much that when I found someone selling THREE similar pieces on Craigslist for $5 each, I snapped them up! (excessive much?)  Here's a before picture of the one I just completed:

These were made in the 60's and 70's and what I thought was really neat is that on the back of this, in raised lettering, it says "Made in the USA".  It also says it was made in Indiana.  We don't see that very much anymore!

So here's what Beth at Sawdust & Embryo's did with hers.  She even painted part of her flowers orange, and we all know how much I love orange:

Yeah, I'm jealous much.

I, however, was going in a different direction with mine because it was going to land in Girlfriend's bathroom.  For what I was doing I needed to prime it, and then paint it gloss white.  I've learned to prime anything that is going a lighter color and that I don't plan on distressing.  So I bought a brand new spray can of Kilz oil based primer and got to work.

What happened next is right out of a DIY horror movie!  I was very careful to shake up my can of primer and even do a quick test spray. All seemed well.  I then proceeded to prime my vintage art piece.  Instead of spraying smoothly the Kilz Primer sputtered and spattered and clumped and gobbed it's way out of the can.  And with one spray I had completely ruined the nice smooth finish on this piece.  As a matter of fact, after that first spray of primer my piece looked like an old 70's popcorn ceiling!  Here's a pic (I did not include a pic of me crying over ruined art...)

Isn't that awful?  I tried everything I could to get that can to spray right and it just didn't work.  It was a nice warm day outside so it dried nearly instantly (I guess that would be a plus for Kilz), but since it had dried so fast I could not wipe it off (I tried!).  The next thing I tried was a piece of fine sand paper.  That managed to get the little leaves flattened out again but the rest was still a big hot mess.  Finally I got a very hard bristled scrub brush, took this over to the sink and got to work.  Here's a pic with the brush that sorta saved it:

And that was as good as it was gonna get.  It still wasn't perfectly smooth like it was before, but it was workable.  I live too far from the store to justify returning my Kilz, so I sent them an email and haven't heard back :-(

Next I went over it with a light dusting of Valspar Gloss White Spray Paint.  Good 'ol Valspar, that kind of saved it.  Onto the the next step.  I grabbed a sample of Melon colored Oops paint - don't you love that price -

And I used it to paint the flowers.  Then Girlfriend came over and needed homework help, but instead took my paintbrush away and painted the flowers herself.  I think she did a fine job:

 And...

We were having so much fun!  Anyway, after the flowers were done we used a bright turquoise color in the middle of each flower:

We just loved it!  We wanted to tone down the brightness a bit though, so the last (time consuming) step was to glaze the entire piece.  For that we chose Martha Stewart Living Metallic Glaze in Mercury.  Yes, I use this glaze everywhere and one day will probably glaze my entire body.  No I'm not being bought off by Martha, but she's welcome to send me a check for all my enthusiastic advertising.

Mercury is a silvery metallic glaze and very pretty.  We glazed the whole piece.  A word of advice for glazing a piece like this is to use a small brush to put it on, and a small dry brush to wipe it off.  When it was done the leaves were defined and it had a little sparkle and shine to it, just like Girlfriend.  Lastly we hung it up in her bathroom and it is now the "inspiration piece" for the rest of the room.  Considering there is nothing else on any wall in there.  That means I'm going to be blogging about decorating this place for a looong time. Here's some more pics:

 So pretty!

It matches Cutie Girl's jewelry box below it:

Too bad I'm in an apartment and can't paint the walls.  I can think of some great colors that would show this little piece off nicely!  But we'll make do.  At least we don't have contractor white walls!

So that's it for another episode of BIG FAMILY/small apartment.  I hope you'll tune in next time for some more small space decorating advice!

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