Being a Newbie

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My mom (aka Deedles) and I were out one Friday combing garage sales as we are known to do. She really wanted to get my daughter a jewelry box given the new state of her pierced ears and all the earrings that come along with that. We found this ginormous jewelry box (from Lori Greiner of Shark Tank fame) for $3.

Nice find Deedles.

She wanted to paint it and get it all ready for my daughter. I sent her home with some white paint and directions to make her own chalk paint for her new project.

Now, please be aware my mom knows I am about to slam her painting skills. I asked her permission 🙂 (You can check out my praise for her and her insane talents here.)

Paint is not my mom’s medium. BUT… she really loves her granddaughter. Plus she knows I was busy, so she decided to tackle this project herself. She is a newbie chalk painter. After this job I think she might be a retired one too.

Deedles brought back this sad looking jewelry box with globs of streaky rough paint, unevenly spread across everything, including the hardware.

Now, this women can’t sew something without matching the fabric patterns at all the seams and overdoes every sewing trick known to man. She is meticulous. She is gifted. With sewing. Painting, not so much.

I’m pretty sure the pictures don’t do the roughness justice. She begrudgingly handed over her project and gave me a “you do it” plea. So I went to work on our garage sale score to transform it into something more fun and interesting for a 10 year old girl. Mae already has a ton of color in her room, so I choose to glam it up a bit. The details are below.

I joke about my mom’s freshman approach to chalkpaint not to make fun of her, but to remind us all (especially myself) that we have to start somewhere and we are not all gifted in the same ways.  The moment mom handed the jewelry box back over to me I had a light bulb moment. A project that I thought was so simple was a burden, not fun and kind of unsuccessful for Deedles. I could visually see that our gifts are not the same, this just flat out isn’t her thing.

And thank God for that!

How boring if we were good at the exact same things. Besides it not being her cup of tea, she is new to the trade. She doesn’t know all the tricks and shortcuts yet. She isn’t even familiar with the supplies and tools. And honestly, I didn’t exactly give her a lesson.

Here is how I painted this gingham topped jewelry box :

I covered the entire top with painter’s tape, lined up side by side for even measure.

Then I removed every third strip. I lightly sprayed a coat of metallic gold spray paint over the top.

Then I removed the remaining middle stripe and painted over the top again, making sure to leave a color variation in the two uncovered stripes.

Next, I covered the top again, going perpendicular. This time I removed every other stripe and sprayed lightly.