Sometimes, something happens which makes you have to adapt your original plans and in my experience that often leads to something more interesting. I teach an after school art class to children in my local area and we have two golden rules, one is that the children can never describe their work as ‘rubbish’ and the other is that they should never be afraid of making mistakes, there is a lot to be learned from mistakes.
When I bought this pair of bedside cabinets I had planned something quite different to how they turned out in the end. The drawers were stencilled using the Relief Stencil Paste followed by a coat of grey paint and lots of stencilling using the Bukhara and Lodi stencils in white to the tops and sides. In theory that should have been it, but two things happened, one was that I didn’t really like the finished design and the other was that as the cabinets are teak there was quite a lot of bleed through which I hadn’t anticipated and so patches of yellow appeared! I had made a mistake with the design and I had made a mistake in not sealing the wood before painting it.
What to do? Be bold I decided. Thankfully it was a lovely day so I was able to work in the garden, I knew it was going to be messy!
I gave the cabinets a coat of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint™ in Aubusson which is a lovely deep teal colour. All of my stencilling had now disappeared, but once dry I heavily sanded the paint to reveal some of the stencil design beneath. The 3D stencils on the drawers were sanded more gently, just knocking off the paint on the edges.
Finally I painted on a couple of coats of matt varnish. I definitely prefer the after to the before!
Decorate Decorate 
