Chalk Paint Color Emile Lowes
Karen Donnelly generally snaps photos of alarming scenes that she will accompany home to her Tinton Falls flat and charm as corrective landscapes.
Recently, Donnelly has been abstraction out her assignment on canvases fabricated of wood. They are cast-off chests of drawers, aged armoires and added pieces with ambrosial shapes.
"I adulation aged furniture, whether it's austerity boutique finds or from acreage sales," she says. "I attending at the allotment and I think, what mural would work?"
For a best Lane chest, it was a arena with sailboats on the Navesink River. A washstand, corrective green, appearance a rural South Jersey ambience forth a attenuated top panel. On a ample red dresser, she corrective the drawers to characterize a hillside farmhouse she noticed while alive through Virginia.
"It's like a painting and a anatomic allotment of appliance all in one," Donnelly says of her work. "I'll move the accouterments to abode it so it works. It's affectionate of fun, and it's a challenge."
What's new actuality isn't her process, but the paint. Donnelly was afresh broke as a painter-in-residence by Annie Sloan, the woman abaft the berserk accepted book paints. Donnelly isn't paid for the three-month role, but receives paints for experimentation.
Sloan has accounting added than 20 books accompanying to adorning painting and home decor, and her England-based aggregation has a cult-like draw amid adroit and aesthetic followers about the globe.
Sloan's products, including the water-based indoor-outdoor paints, finishing waxes, stencils and brushes, advice abridge blush changes on appliance and accessories. The paints and waxes can actualize a array of furnishings on wood, metals, brick, leather, fabrics and added materials. And they awning up absolute finishes with no stripping or conference required.
Donnelly uses the acrylic with artist's brushes. "I commonly do oil paintings or watercolors," she says. But Sloan's assignment prompted her to aftermath breathtaking appliance which she has awash for $800 to $1,500, generally corrective on commission. An armoire Donnelly corrective was featured at this year's Stately Homes-by-the-Sea Designer Appearance Abode in Rumson. It austere forth with three of her oil paintings and abounding added admirable and admired items that were absent back an adventitious blaze at the appearance abode abode appropriate it to be shuttered aloof afore its appointed opening.
Sloan, an artisan herself, blogs and uses amusing media to appearance the versatility of her paints, and artists like Donnelly advice authenticate its abeyant and aggrandize the appeal. In the years back Sloan created her trademarked formulations, action amid consumers has led several above acrylic manufacturers to actualize "chalky accomplishment paints" that, Donnelly says, can't angle up to the original.
Still, at Lowes.com, Valspar's anemic acrylic accomplishment is generally the accountable of alive online altercation breadth staffers acknowledgment questions on address and more. Dutch Boy and the craft-store cast DecoArt additionally accomplish formulas aggressive by Sloane's book paints.
Donnelly came assimilate Sloan's alarm through her sister, Patty Seaman, who bristles years ago became one of the aboriginal three Americans to advertise Annie Sloan paints. Her shop, Acrylic Passion in Red Bank, now specializes in the paint, and anniversary Saturday she offers workshops on the assorted finishes it can create.
"You can transform animal aphotic amber or old oak kitchen cabinets," says Donnelly, who helps with the workshops. "When you use the two-part arrangement -- the book acrylic and wax - the accomplishment is absolutely like a beautiful, lustered French polish."
"When you blow it, you appetite to pet it like a cat," says Seaman. "It aloof feels so soft."
Getting that accomplishment can be cher at about $40 per quart for Sloan's book acrylic and about $25 added for the finishing wax. Seaman notes, however, that a quart covers 150 aboveboard feet. "That's abundant for assorted pieces of furniture," she says.
"Wax finishes accept been acclimated back the aboriginal centuries, and book acrylic has been about for 25 years," says Seaman, a faux finisher and a adhesive artist. She apparent Sloan, her paints and techniques about six years ago through Sloan's book "Creating the French Look."
Seaman contacted Sloan and would assurance on to be one of three "stockists" to accompany the paints to the United States, initially affairs them through her website BestFurniturePaint.com, breadth prices are lower than in her shop. There are now added than 600 book acrylic stockists in the U.S., some of whom were accomplished by Seaman. Her Acrylic Passion workshops additionally cobweb with Sloan's ambition of affairs her articles through dealers who can advise book paint's possibilities.
In the meantime, Donnelly continues to analyze the Shore breadth and above to charm her visions. "There's a lot of adorableness here, and a lot of opportunities to abduction some admirable things."
