Painting an old school chair with Chalk Paint™

I was fortunate enough to find this beautiful (in it's own way!) old school chair - there's such a feeling of familiarity to these chairs for so many people, that when I saw it, I had to buy it!

The actual chair was 'solid' which is great, because I've sat on some before that were really wobbly! The wood however had lots of scratches and a few chips - although no graffiti! 

The chair actually looks in better condition than it really was in the photo! If it had looked that nice, I might have been tempted to leave it as it was!

It took awhile to decide how I was going to paint it,  I thought about decoupaging it with children's comics as I'd seen one before that looked fun. I had a good look around Pinterest (a great website! Follow me at www.pinterest.com/thelittlewd and you'll probably get an idea about what I'm planning next!) and got some ideas - although I didn't quite find what I decided to do!

When I'm undecided about colour schemes, I find it really helpful to draw a sketch of the item, and play around with colour. You could use any paper for this, but I choose to use my 'Annie Sloan Work Book' as this not only gives great tips along the way, but also keeps all my ideas together so I can always look at what ideas I had in the past!

Having decided on the colour, I took the plunge! Remember with items that are small enough, it's best to paint them upside down first, as this helps ensure you don't miss any bits!

Having painted the whole chair with Louis Blue Chalk Paint™, I decided on my next part of the project, using the patterned paint rollers that we sell at the shop! I love the cow parsley design of 'Tussock' and find it really forgiving with any mistakes so knew this would be a good choice!
Having played around with my design in the Work Book, I decided that a complimentary colour of Aubusson Blue would work well, and show up better than Old White.

I waxed the chair with Annie Sloan Clear Wax, and nearly finished the project here - but something wasn't quite right! The 'clean' look of the colour and lines of the chair gave it a modern look, but this didn't go with the 'lumps and bumps' and scratches that the surface of the chair had. I asked a few customers that were popping in to the shop their opinion too, and ultimately decided that the chair needed a distressed look to give a 'nod' to it's past as a school chair. 
I'm so happy with the end result, and here it is......