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Before and Afters

Before and Afters

Say Hello to Ironstone

I’m finally getting around to introducing another Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint color… …Ironstone…     What else would I call my white?  For this piece, I’m so glad I finally got a lot of chipping.  All white pieces aren’t really my style, so I was hoping for lots of chippiness, which I got,  and I left the top and drawers wood.   Here’s how the piece started… I sort of laughed when I showed my husband the finished dresser.  Most people would probaly consider it a “before” with the partially painted chippiness.  Oh well.  Those who get it, get it.     I was so fortunate to buy this piece with the gorgeous original glass knobs…     Oh, Milk Paint chippy goodness on turned legs.  Sigh.   I did make a video on getting the chippy look with Milk Paint and I just need to edit it to get it

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Before and Afters

the furniture shuffle

Today was not what I expected. I was planning to get a lot of work done on my computer…taking care of e-mail, working on the new milk paint website and then getting my house cleaned up a bit.  Well, I came out of my room and turned my computer on, just like any normal day.  I got my boys something to eat while my computer did it’s thing to get ready for me to put it to work.  I went back to check on the progress and it was stuck on the welcome screen.  Okay, no biggie.  Just reboot.  Same thing.  Stuck.  Reboot again.  Same thing.  Spent over an hour on the phone with various tech people.  Bad news.  I had to totally wipe my computer clean and restore it to factory settings and start over.  Nooooooooooooooo!  Well, it could’ve been much worse.  Thanksfully, I had everything backed up with

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Before and Afters

messy home, chippy chair, healthy food

Well, I did it again. I took the weekend off and it was much needed. Last week, especially towards the end was really insane. For the other photo shoots done in my home, I popped into a few pictures, but it was pretty minimal.  For this shoot, I had a stylist for my hair and makeup and I was the center of attention for the bulk of the shoot.  It was quite a change of pace, but I have to admit it was pretty fun to be a model for just a couple of hours.  While I was all prettied up and one room in my house was all prettied up, everything else was a mess.  I had boxes of props for the shoot and furniture waiting to be refinished and boxes containing 20.000 color cards for my milk paint line.  The poor UPS guy that morning gave me a

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Before and Afters

Say hello to “Kitchen Scale”

Time for another reveal of the next Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint color – “Kitchen Scale”…   Here’s how this piece started…    Yeah, it’s hard to believe it’s the same piece, isn’t it? Here’s why I named the color Kitchen Scale…     The color isn’t exactly the same.  My aqua has more green in it, but this scale was my inspiration.     I love how this paint finish turned out.  It only chipped in a few small places, but the entire finish had this wonderful texture.  You can see it if you look closely…     I decided to jazz up the dresser with some branches and blossoms.  I’ve enjoyed the decorative painting I’ve done lately and it seemed fitting for this piece.  It’s a very petite dresser, so it’s perfect for a little girl’s room or guest room.   It chipped just a little bit around one

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Before and Afters

Say hello to “Flow Blue”

It’s time for another reveal of one of my Milk Paint colors. Here’s Flow Blue…   This is how the piece looked before I painted it..   ..and this is how it looked with two coats of paint, some detail painting and before I refinished the top.  This is the part where I was not in love with it and was ready to start all over…     …but then I refinished the top and sanded the finish to soften it…   …and it all worked out.  (Do you know that’s pretty common for me?  There’s almost always a moment of doubt or a time when I think the piece looks terrible, but I press through and it always seems to work out.)   The name of the color come from the technique used in the 1800’s – early 1900’s to transfer blue patterns onto pottery.  Flow Blue dishes have

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Before and Afters

Say hello to “Typewriter”

What else would I call the black in my milk paint line?  I thought about “fan”, but that didn’t work for me, so I went with Typewriter, one of my other favorite vintage decorating elements. Introducing this color was tricky for me because I don’t usually paint pieces entirely black.  It looks too heavy to me and I think you lose a lot of the detail of the piece.  So, I decided to leave the drawers wood, paint the body black and add a little decorative painting to the front.   Here’s how the dresser started…   Those stripes are contact paper.  I was about to rip them to shreds (figuratively) for being so ugly, but then I realized it was really pretty clever.  They applied a burled-looking contact paper in strips to look like inlay.  Ugly, but the idea is clever.  Very thrifty, too.  I pealed off the contact

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Before and Afters

Say Hello to “Lucketts Green”

Happy 4th of July to everyone!  We just finished our hamburgers and corn and I’ll partake of some black cherry ice cream once the boys go to bed.  This morning, though, I had some time in the workshop to complete a couple of dressers to introduce two more of my milk paint colors and to get the pieces ready to take to Lucketts tomorrow.  So, without further delay, say hello to Lucketts Green…   Here’s the dresser before…     So, why is it called Lucketts Green?  Well, if you’ve ever been to Lucketts, you would know immediately why I call it that.  For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, this is why… It’s very similar to the color of the shingles on the exterior of The Lucketts Store.   And for those of you who don’t know, it’s one of my favorite places on earth and I am privileged to be a

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Before and Afters

the big black box

It all started with a black Friday sale.  We had been thinking about getting a flat screen TV for a while and we found the one we wanted on an Internet sale for $1000 off.  We decided it was time and pulled the trigger.  The TV we owned at the time fit in an armoire in the corner, but that wasn’t going to work for the new flat screen.  Despite the sacred DIY rule to never remove a fireplace, we decided to remove our fireplace, which didn’t work and we weren’t very fond of anyway.   As soon as we got home from visiting family, the project began.  (Guys don’t procrastinate on a project when a flat screen TV is involved.)   It was messy, but the demolition only took a few hours.     I patched and painted the wall and found a perfect vintage buffet to use as a console.   For a while, though,

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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May 20th, 2026 at 1pm EST

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