Chippy Look Number One: A Varnished Timber Table with Metal Legs

This table has good lines to start with. 

It's a quality piece that has spent its life easily tucked away into a rarely used room. 

Tables of this size, shape and style are incredibly useful. They serve as great entryway pieces or bedside tables, they tuck into corners as well as onto short awkward walls or between chairs. 

They can be used for anything from holding lamps and books to — well how cute would this look in a laundry room or toilet? 

This one just needed a lift and a lighten...and a whole lot of chippy goodness!

Time to bring on the Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint in the creamy, luscious colour, Marzipan.

On pieces like this, working from the bottom up is often the way to go. The curvy legs with all those twists and turns were going to be the greatest challenge. The table was flipped onto its top and after painting most of it with the Small Paint Brush to start, I went back over and into the tight spots with an Artist Brush that you can find in our online shop. They are quite useful and handy for fine work like this and make the job a great deal easier.

I knew I would get chipping on the legs which was exactly what I was after. They are metal, and the chipping wasn't guaranteed, I think after working with the paint long enough you can sometimes predict....sometimes! Or I just got lucky?!!

It was a crazy day of painting in the studio with a general theme of chippy finishes, white or near white upstyling with Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint!  There's the hall table on the left, looking like a solid finish, but getting started on chippifying...

Painting the timber table top was last as it is a small, flat surface and super easy to paint. It held onto the MMS Milk Paint pretty well until I ran a bit of fine-grade sandpaper over the top to pull off the paint and have chippy on the timber as well. To do this, you do not need to sand hard, instead gently drag sandpaper over the surface once or twice in the same direction and it should do the job.

Once the top was perfectly chipped, the gorgeous Maison au Restaurant Stencil was added using  our medium Stencil Brush and Lumiere Metallic Paint in Pewter mixed with Rub-n-Buff for a two-tone effect. 

When dried, the stencil was lightly sanded back so it was a bit aged, before sealing the entire table with Miss Mustard Seed's Tough Coat Sealer.

Chippy Look Number Two: A Raw Timber Footstool Goes Shabby Chic

This is a great example of how easy is to create a chippy look on nearly any surface. My lovely Workshop client took this gorgeous raw pine footstool and made a masterpiece!

The lovely Miss T painted the raw timber with MMS Milk Paint in Curio to stain the raw pine into a rich shade of walnut.

Once the footstool dried she heavily rubbed the MMS Wax Puck over the entire surface before painting it with Milk Paint in the colour, Linen. The white marks on the brown are where the wax was rubbed leaving a resist for the next coat of paint. As she paints the Linen colour, it looks quite rough and messy...that's OK! It will get better. Once dried, sand lightly to your liking and seal for a perfect finish! 

A beautiful result! Perfectly chipped and aged — all from new clear pine.  And this is her very first chippy-finish project all taking place at our Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint Workshop.

Please let me know if you have any questions on how to achieve these looks.  I'm here to help. xx

It's all here...for the love...
Sada