It's Only Paint

I would love to say that this is the "before" picture; of  a little desk I found on Craigs List.

The truth is that the baby pink interior is  the "before". The exterior was bright gloss white, with plenty of red marker and pen stains. They let me have it for $30 because of the stains and the fact that one of the fold down hinges was broken and had carved up some of the interior.

I had thought I might do a dark green with a fern white pattern across the front. I tried CeCe Caldwell's Michigan Pine.

Original Barbie pink interior. This had obviously been a little girl's  desk or vanity in it's previous life. 

It did not take me long to decide that this was not the "after" I was after.

I tried Behr's Prairie Sage next. Better, but still not quite what I was going for.

Next I gave it a coat of Behr's Safari Green; I went over that with a very light white wash in a criss-cross pattern , this gave it an almost fabric feel. The top got a white wash to give the feel of weathered wood.- Ok,  now we were getting somewhere...

The decoupage papers are Martha Stewart's, and I did the interior with Behr Gray Morning (my go to color- very duck egg blue). I lined the interior with an aqua contact paper.

So all in all I gave this piece no less than 4 different coats of paint before I got it to where I was satisfied. Never be afraid to paint, if you don't like it you can always paint over it,

After all "it's only paint".