Retro Design on a Dresser

I've been admiring furniture pieces on other people's blogs lately where they've transferred designs onto their furniture. I did my research to find out just how they were getting the designs transferred onto the furniture, and I've been keeping my eyes open for just the right piece of furniture to try this technique. So, finally, on a local for sale site through Face Book, I found a suitable piece of furniture. It had a pretty plain front and wooden handles that I figure I could paint right over. The dresser (well chest of drawers really), is about 4 feet tall and when I found it, it was painted black and the paint was peeling. My first step was to do a little scraping and sanding. Then I used Annie Sloan's chalk paint in old white to cover over the black.

I found a graphic that I liked at the Graphic Fairy website. I bet if your reading this blog, you are familiar with that site. It's just full of wonderful graphics that the blog owner, Karen, offers for free! I made a transparency of that graphic and then used a projector to project it onto the front of the dresser. From there I just traced over the lines. I used acrylic black paint and two artist brushes. I used a large liner brush and a flat shader brush. Believe me, there were times I had to improvise on the lines. The hardest part was getting the lines to look right over the uneven molding on the sides and the handles. It took several hours of painting to get the design completed.

Here is the image partially completed:

Yep, she's bald at this point. LOL

Finally, she has hair.

The chest of drawers isn't quite finished yet. I'm letting the paint dry overnight and then I'll put a polycrylic sealer over the paint for protection. I might paint the inside of the drawers too. I'll just have to see how energetic I'm feeling. This will be headed to my booth at Le Fou Flea for the February First Friday Sales, Feb. 7 - 9 in Kansas City.