Well mostly my life revolves around the shop these days~
painting furniture, ordering inventory, ringing sales, talking to people
about Chalk Paint®, and trying to just keep up.
The latest offerings in furniture are this Empire dresser~
A Hepplewhite chest on chest dresser~
This Gothic dresser~
The other thing I have been doing every Sunday is teaching my sell out workshops for Annie Sloan enthusiasts. Its a four hour class and I teach 11 women~it takes a lot of prep work and I am happy to have Colin setting me up for the class. He goes to get the lumber for the samples and does all the wood cutting and the layout of the supplies for the class on Saturday after we close in the afternoon. Much like setting a table~he gets it done! I just have to make the dinner!!
After class I ring up the sales~most people wait to
take a class to decide what they want to buy and which colors they plan to use.
The week before I told you all I was in Colorado at my fellow Stockist pal Robyn Story's vacation home.
What a blast I had sneaking away from my shop duties!! Here is a few snippets of what went down~
Robyn sent all the supplies ahead~holy moly! We planned to do our work in the kitchen and laid everything out for an impressive looking photo!! Who wouldn't want to jump right in and start creating? We had no rules~we would be led by our creative intuitions. Robyn and I were joined by another stockist Stepahnie Kahrs Granit. It was a 5 day submersion into the creative part of our minds...no stores to watch, only paint and play time.
Robyn's kitchen got some protective coverings before we began~good thing too as
the paint and product was flying!
We went from the kitchen table over to the island and back again~
most days beginning right after coffee and a bagel until 11 pm!
It was so interesting to see what the others were working on~sometimes one of us
would say "thats not looking so hot" and it would end up being one of our favorite samples!
So that in and of itself was a learning moment...
just keep on working a piece until you LOVE it!
The kitchen table looked like this at the end of every night.
Totally busted up with rags and dirty brushes and pots and bowls of all kinds of stuff.
We had little pots of gilder paste opened besides
bowls of clear and dark wax~you name it, we had it opened!
We were creating masterpieces!!!
Step one and step two and step three~we kept photo journaling it
to try to remember the genius of our ways!
Of course we managed one night out on the Colorado town~
When we were finished we had some real beauties~this one was Stephanies~
We used Artisan Enhancements Transfer Gel and Crackle Tex along with Gilder Paste on top of Chalk Paint® to create these pretty boards with Robyn's exclusive fine arts images that she owns the rights to.
I will be tailoring a course soon at Maison Decor based on our Colorado Creative trip and it will based upon many of the techniques and results we got while in Colorado. Stay tuned!
We made some beautiful browns with Chalk Paint® and then gilded the lily on some with Gilder Paste (bottom) and even some Pearl Plaster (top left).
The next thing on the docket coming up soon will be the Annie Sloan convention for Stockist in New Orleans! Justin and I will be headed there for the first week of April. Stores might be closed for a few days, but this trip is a highly anticipated event and I cannot wait to see Annie again and introduce her to Justin.
I will get to see all of my friends that I have made through this past year~its going to be fantastic. We take seminars on subjects and attend talks by Annie, and they always have surprises in store for us too.
For more information and how to purchase Artisan Enhancements
visit our online store here. I will be creating some pieces of furniture in
the shop before I go away. They will have the Colorado Creative collaborative
methods we used and I look forward to seeing what you guys think!
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