Santa Claus is coming to town!

Tonight is our small town's Santa Claus parade. It is always a fun event and the Christmas lights on the floats and vehicles twinkle in the dark sky. We have just enough snow to make it festive...if you were to rewind the calendar to last week, we would have had too much snow!  I am trying to keep busy with the projects since December is right around the corner.

I am pleased to share some of my latest work.

I bought a wooden file cabinet (in need of a bit of TLC) from an estate sale and wanted to do something completely new and unexpected. I have been chalk painting but didn't want to do that this time around.  Just in time I received my package from General Finishes that included two colors of their milk paint and a can of High Performance Topcoat in a flat finish.  Of course I had to open the paint right away (it was like an early Christmas present!)

As the cabinet had been in not so great shape I first had to wash it.  (Because you just never know what's in there when it's been sitting and unused for a while.  . After it had dried I gave it a light sanding with a medium grit sandpaper. Yes, I took the drawers out to do this....   

Now the fun begins!

Woohoo - I opened the can of Linen color milk paint and loved it....but was it going to be a nice paint to work with?  Oh yes it was! It went on so smooth and didn't drag like some other paints I have used. (Not sure if drag would be the technical term but the brush just flowed like it was skating on ice.)
I did two coats of the paint, it really covered well and I could have gotten away with one coat but I think I am so used to doing at least two coats I was stuck in that rut.

Anyhow, after the paint had dried, I did rough measurements for line placement but wasn't too concerned that they be an exact distance from one another. This is a fun plaid and I wanted it to be unstructured.  After the markings were in place I drew a bunch (that is a technical term!) of ideas for plaids using colored pencils. I always like navy and red-burgundy together so those were my starting points.

I used flat artist brushes to do the lines....I got a rhythm going so that I could make the plaid come together in a way that I liked.  It is a lot of tedious work but I was glad I took my time because where the lines intersect  you are able to see that they do.

After a few days of painting lines, it came together the way I envisioned.  For the topcoat I decided to use the flat finish High Performance Topcoat that I got from General Finishes.  I used a plastic spoon to stir it and then used the spoon to put it into a separate container (so that I didn't somehow contaminate the topcoat in the can in case any paint transferred to the brush).  I used about 20 teaspoons per coat of the topcoat. You sure don't need a lot of this to get good coverage.  I did two coats and am so happy with the results.

A shout out to General Finishes https://generalfinishes.com  This is my first experience using their products (and actually my first experience with milk paint!)  I am more than happy with the quality and ease of application.  Guess what is on my list to Santa now???

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You know that I use a styrofoam head sometimes but it lacks a real neck so sometimes I will hang a scarf on a hanger with a shirt/sweater as the background but this time I used a real model.   She is a but shy so I cut her head off...don't worry, only for the picture!

This is a double strand acrylic yarn wrap scarf.  I did a nice ribbing detail (my own design) and knit for days and days til I finished it. (Ok, I knew it would take a while so I am not really complaining).  It is secured with four wooden buttons and I made yarn loops to put around the buttons.  It is really toasty warm to wear.

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That's it for now, I have more projects on the go and also some of the ones I have recently completed can't be posted on-line until after Christmas as they are for gifts.

You can email me at penandinkwell@yahoo.com or 

find me on Facebook at Handcrafted Projects by Sue Lane  

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Handcrafted-Projects-by-Sue-Lane/105487656209042?ref=hl

I am also on Pinterest so follow me! I will add my new projectst to the  "My Creations" board soon.  http://www.pinterest.com/sue_montgomery/

Thanks for looking!