MMS Inspired Stenciled Dresser

We all know her and love her work...yes, MMS. I love her stenciled furniture pieces and  I had the perfect dresser to try stenciling on. My dresser was a boring rectangular ho-hum dresser that was not old, didn't have awesome legs or any interesting features at all.

But it was what I had. As I wrote in an earlier post, my daughter has moved closer to home :) and could really use a dresser. She and I both have kept our eyes opened to CL, but no luck. And I already owned the boring dresser and was ready to pass it on.

The inspirations are the MMS blue dresser and the very chippy yellow one, both on her blog and on pinterest. They are beautiful. I'm not 100% keen on chippiness, so my plan was to stencil and lightly distress. First, I made an awesome stencil using notebook paper, a pencil and an exacto knife. I marked the length of a dresser drawer, folded the notebook paper in half and drew my design. Leaving the paper folded, I cut the stencil through so when I opened it I had a wonderful drawer length symmetric stencil.

I decided to paint the dresser a cheery mint green with white stenciling. I already had a partial quart of green from a previous project so that was an easy decision. I mixed up my homemade chalk paint and painted the body and drawers green. The huge benefit of chalk paint is no prep work and quality paint adhesion. The dresser had been uncovered in the garage for 6 months. I wiped the dust off w a paper towel. That was the extent of my prep. Love it! I like to paint,but not so much clean and sand. After 2 coats I gave it a quickie sanding on the drawer fronts to get good stenciling. Doing 1 drawer at a time, I taped my stencil to the front and used white chalk to mark the pattern.

using white craft paint and a small paintbrush, i followed along the chalked stencil until the drawer was complete. I continued on each drawer until all were complete and I was nicely surprised to see all of the drawers looked uniform.

After drying, I put the drawers in the dresser and added a few more details with my craft paint.

I sanded, lightly distressed all surfaces, and wiped with a tack cloth before waxing with Fiddes and Sons clear wax. I added simple white knobs and was finished.

My daughter helped carry the dresser around in the front yard to help find a suitable photography location.   

I'm happy with the dresser transformation. It was a fun project. My daughter is taking it to her new apartment and I'm happy it will have a new home. 



Things I learned from this project:

• how to make a stencil
• how to take somewhat better photos