Months and months ago, I picked up this vintage sideboard from an estate sale that Little Miss Clutter Buster was hosting. I love buying furniture from her estate sales because there is such a large crew of people working that I never have to load anything myself! 🙂

This isn’t my usual go-to style of furniture, but I really liked the pattern on the metal overlays on the door. Having just received a shipment of new gilding waxes, the roping detail along the edges and bottom were a perfect pattern to test out the wax!

But first, to paint.

I wanted this piece to be the rich midnight blue shade of Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint in Artissimo but with a clean finish that is guaranteed with Chalk Paint®. So rather than using Milk Paint with bonding agent and sanding the piece down, I used Aubusson Chalk Paint® as a base coat.

Aubusson is a rich blue shade that serves as a great base to Artissimo.

There are two advantages to using Chalk Paint® as my base coat. One, I can control and tailer the Milk Paint finish without any surprise chipping. Two, the rich base color allows for a sweet coverage of just one coat of the Milk Paint rather than the typical two coats.

The top coat of Artissimo becomes quite dull once dried. You notice the left side is dry and pretty lifeless compared the still wet paint on the right. Hemp oil as the top coat will bring life instantly back to the color! But first, to complete the gold gilding wax.

I added gilding wax to the rope trim work and the metal inserts on the doors…but it was looking pretty obnoxious so I added some more Artissimo over the gold work on the doors so that the gilding was more of an accent than a dominant color on the front.

The end result was a much softer and understated look. And, when I added the homp oil to the entire piece (even over the guilding wax), the excess gold blended throughout the piece in a very subtle fashion.

The camera really picked up the gold on the doors which looks much more understated in person.

Where there is light distressing along the top and edges, you can see peeks of the Aubusson base coat which is a great contrasting color to Artissimo.

This style is quite different from my normal painting projects, but I had fun using new supplies and pairing products! You can buy gilding wax in a variety of gold shades as well as bronze and silver at knot too shabby…FINALLY!!! 🙂

(And, this piece is on the for sale page).