{How to} Hand Painted Graphics to Dress Up Any Piece of Anything

A little while ago I did a post about how to clean up your dining room table.  If your house is anything like mine, your kids terrorize the kitchen/dining room table. Stuck on food, glue, stuck on food, marker, stuck on food.  You get the picture.

After getting it all cleaned up and looking decent again I thought it just needed a little sumtin, sumtin.

I was so enamored with the Queen Bee Project and realized in the process how much I enjoyed the detailed brush work.  It was like therapy and a strength workout all in one.  And the outcome was so rewarding that I knew I had to tackle another detailed brush project like that one.

This time I employed my 10 year old to help me with the difficult decision of which graphic to choose from the myriad of choices the Graphics Fairy offers.  If you have yet to check out her options, you need to go, like now.  We stumbled upon a few that made it a tough decision but finally decided on something French.  Hopefully tying in the "French Farmhouse Glam" look I'm going for in the dining room.  (What French Farmhouse Glam looks like is yet to remain determined. Still working on the process.)

The Graphics Fairy has a post that links to this site Block Posters.  Block Posters takes the graphic you are wishing to use and blows it up to the size that you would like it to be.  So the way I figured out how big I wanted the graphic, was just to lay out blank pieces of printer paper on the table until they covered the area that was suitable.  You can then choose how many pages wide and tall you would like your graphic to be and then print it out at home on that many sheets of paper.  Super simple!

Once the printing is done you will then need to lay all the pages out and cut and tape them until they are all lined up and one happy graphic.

Then flip over your graphic sheet and go to town with the side of a piece of chalk (or your sons pastel stash) until the whole graphic is covered.  I used white because I was transferring to a dark surface.  If you are transferring, say to a piece of light colored painted furniture, you would want to use dark chalk or graphite.

Now flip your sheet back over and place it where you would like the graphic to be transferred.  Tape that puppy down.  You don't want it moving on you now.

Once taped and securely in place, begin the lengthy {and not as fun as painting} step of using a pen or pencil or to go over the image and thus transferring it to the piece of furniture.

Once an hour or so goes by and you are finally done, remove the transfer paper {but keep it close by for reference}.

I used black acrylic paint and a very fine point paint brush and I began my favorite part of the project.  Turn on the Adele station of Pandora and belt out some tunes as you paint to your hearts content.

I let the paint set up for 24 hours.  Then I got out my trusted Minwax Finishing Paste and waxed on and then 15 minutes later waxed off.

I hope this post helps and inspires someone out there to tackle a project like this.  Never for a second think you can't do it because you can.  All it takes is a little time and patience and you can have a beautifully finished piece that will look unlike any on your block.