I overcame my fear of the dark (wax).

I know I'm not the only one who has had a fear of the dark. It is a fear that I acquired after a silly and quite avoidable mistake my second time working with Annie Sloan chalk paint.

Eager to get started using the wonderful Annie Sloan products, I merely skimmed the instructions and dove head first into that can of luscious rich dark wax. And within moments my excitement had turned to horror. Because I had failed to properly read the very clear and very simple instructions, I applied the dark wax to a painted project without first applying a coat of clear wax. Why, you might ask, is this a problem? Well, without the clear wax coating to act as a barrier the dark wax comes into direct contact with and permanently stains the paint.

Now, to be clear, this is not a problem if you want that effect. But if you only want the dark wax to create the illusion of a patina that is the result of aging, then not having the clear wax barrier is definitely something you will regret. (But only until you realize that for some reason I absolutely do not understand, you can paint right over the wax and start again--just be sure to let it dry first.)

So that's when I developed my fear of the dark and decided never to open that can again. But oh, how I admired the beautiful effect others achieved by applying dark wax. I drooled over the pics on other people's blogs for several days until I finally decided to face my fear and try once more.

It was my first big project, the 1960"s maple highboy that I recently posted about. (You can read about it in my post from 7/18/14 called I fell in love with the Purple Painted Lady.) I really wanted to get a little bit of rich patina on the turquoise blue top, but I was hesitant. So I went back to the wonderful Tricia at the Purple Painted Lady and watched and rewatched her video on applying dark wax. I also reread Annie Sloan's book 50 Quick and Easy Paint Transformations until I felt the courage slowly return.

 I took a deep breath and opened that can. I kid you not, my palms were sweating, but with the image of Tricia confidently applying the dark wax over clear and quickly wiping it away, I went for it. Well, almost. At the last moment I grabbed a scoop of clear wax and added dark to it, making a less dark and more easily removed (just in case) wax.

I mixed the clear and dark waxes on a paper plate and loaded my waxing brush from there. If you don't use a waxing brush, I strongly recommend that you get one. This one is from Annie Sloan's line.

And it was lovely, but not quite as dark as I wanted. So, now feeling very brave, I applied a dollop of undiluted dark. Perrrfect!

So it was that when it came time to paint the matching bedside table, I had no hesitation at all about applying that rich dark wax, because I remembered the rule: always apply over a fresh coat of clear wax.

Here are before and after pics of that beside table. You can see that I did a very light sanding on this piece, but I do mean light--5 minutes max. I wanted to see if it made any difference to how the paint went on or adhered. The verdict: no discernible difference. 

I chose to "reverse" the colors from how I did the highboy to avoid things looking like I was trying too hard to match it all up. Here is a reminder of how the highboy turned out, so I painted all but the interior front in the blue. There were multiple steps involved in achieving this colour and finish. You can read about them in the post mentioned above. Even so, the whole thing only took a couple of hours to do including drying time and clean up.

Here is the highboy. Same colours, just in reverse. On both I chose to buff only the blue paint. I allowed the white to remain matte. Even so, as you can see here, when light shines on the finish it is not chalky like before the wax goes on.

So now that these two pieces are done I will move on to working on a plaster bust that has been sitting in our en suite for years--another "i'll get around to it some day" project. Well, the day has come. I'll write about it in my next post.

Blessings,
The Duchess of NewLife