I shared this hand painted dresser last week and, as promised, I’m now sharing more detail on the hand painted design.  First of all, I’m always asked if my hand painted designs are stencils.  No, they are hand painted.  I know that will immediately lose some folks when I say that, because a lot of people don’t feel comfortable with hand painting.  I get that.  The kind of hand painting I do is simple strokes, repeated over and over again until it makes an overall design. When you see it up close, you can see how simple and even a little messy it is.  I have learned that the less I overthink it, the better it looks. I always start out by chalking out the rough design.  That way, I know the design is going to look the way I want it to before I put a drop of paint

I’ve shared a lot of tips about distressing furniture through the years, but I decided I would tackle the subject again.  I took pictures of the process as I worked on the Marzipan dresser I revealed yesterday for that very reason. So, here’s how the dresser looked once it was painted.  It has two coats of MMSMP Marzipan with some Ironstone (white) painted on the trim, handles and carved details.  Because I’m going to distress, I wasn’t too concerned with the white paint being perfect or completely opaque.  It actually looks a little sloppy at this stage.  Distressing serves a few purposes, then.  It hides the imperfections in the painting, but it also brings out the details of the piece and adds a sense of age to the fresh coat of paint. I’m going to start with the basics…what is distressing?  It’s more than just roughing up a piece.  It’s about removing