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Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint

Before and Afters

say hello to “Linen”

It’s time to introduce another one of my Milk Paint colors.  Whew!  Painting twelve dressers in all twelve of my colors has taken longer than I thought it would.  I want all of my pieces to be special, but especially these pieces that will act as the “online swatch” for each color.  After this piece, I only have one more left to do – “Boxwood.”  So, without further delay, here’s “Linen”…   Linen is a beautiful cream that’s not too yellow, but not bright white. My husband found this piece at a yard sale and bought it for me.  Awww….I know.  I picked a good guy.  The hardware was ill-fitting and all wrong for this piece.  I disliked the flimsy metal covers for the keyholes as well, so I plucked those off.  Other than the cosmetic issues, this piece was in nice condition.     The insides of the drawers

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buying & selling antiques

Milk Paint at Lucketts!

On Thursday, I drove down to Lucketts with Faith and my husband and we worked on getting my space in the lobby looking great and filled with milk paint.  I’ve been in the lobby for a couple of months, but it’s been hard for me to get settled there.  With the milk paint finally in transit from Canada, I asked two design gurus, Suzanne and Amy of Design House fame, to help me with the layout of the space.  Suzanne traded a slim, glass topped shirt counter for my HUGE hardware counter and she also loaned me the hutch on the back wall.  Soooooo much better.   I’m  selling the two tall bookcases, so the back wall can be a spot for furniture pieces.  I’m hoping to figure out how to maximize that little nook and fill it with cozy furnishings and accessories and hang some of my hand painted

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Furniture Feature Friday – Excuses & a Link Party

I didn’t have the time to pick favorites today because…   …I was moving all of my Milk Paint into my space at Lucketts.  I was so busy trying to get it all done that I didn’t get to have a teary moment until I looked at this picture.  God has really blessed this endeavor.  Wow. …and I’m late because… I was working on the new MMS Milk Paint website!  I still have a lot of work to do to get all of the information posted and all of the retailers listed, but it’s a great start! …and I didn’t turn in my book report because my dog ate it. Here are the rules for our furniture get-together… 1.) Your post has to be about furniture. Please, please, please…just furniture. If you find your link has been deleted, it’s not because I’m mean, it’s because your post was not about

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Before and Afters

say hello to “grain sack”

I don’t know why I left this piece sitting in my basement for so long! It was finished a couple of weeks ago and I finally hauled it up today for a photo shoot.  I knew I would have fun with it and I did.  It’s definitely a favorite.  Say hello to the MMS Milk Paint color “Grain Sack”…    Here’s the piece before…      …and this piece gets better when you start opening it up…       I have a wee bit of a crush on this piece and the play of colors, chippiness and wood.   (The interior is painted in Shutter Gray, by the way.)  So, why did I call this color grain sack?   It may look white-ish, but it’s more of a neutral gray, like a nubby old European grain sack.             I not only love this color straight up,

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buying & selling antiques

doing something, a counter swap & a sale

The blog world is wonderful, but there are downsides.  One of those that I’ve been ignoring for a long time is sites that steal content from bloggers.  I’m not talking about the people who use a picture or highlight a favorite project, but people who rip off entire posts and either claim them as their own or “collect all of your favorite blogs in one place.”  Those sites might seem convenient for readers, but it is theft.  Can you imagine if I gathered all of my favorite magazine articles, cut the pages out, scanned them, put together my own magazine and then made money from ads and subscriptions claiming I’m offering this great service of “collecting all of your favorite magazine articles in one magazine”?   Well, that is what is happening to bloggers.  We work hard to create our content and then it’s swiped automatically from our feeds and published without our knowledge

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Miscellaneus

it is time

On April 27, 2012 (four months ago to the day), I announced that I was going to have my own line of milk paint.  It was my pie-in-the-sky-dream-come-true.  Four months later, I received my first shipment of milk paint.  Not just any milk paint.  MY milk paint.  Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint.  In the boxes and labeling and packaging that I carefully selected and hmmm’d and haw’d over.  In the custom colors I mixed and designed.  I sat cross-legged on the floor, pricing each box.  Just by myself.  In a bandanna and some sweats splattered with paint.  There wasn’t a big ribbon to cut or a ceremony and I wasn’t sipping an IZZE soda while a team of people I don’t know priced it for me.  It was just me in my living room with my paint.  It was a sweet moment as I looked at the stack of boxes.  It’s

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Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint

Get the “Chippy” Look Video Tutorial & Junk Bonanza Giveaway!

I finally got around to editing and uploading my latest milk paint video…   I talk through how to get the “chippy” look on pieces and answer some common questions about the process. Enjoy! (If you usually read my posts through e-mail, click over to my blog to watch the video.)  If you’d like to see my other videos, head over to my You Tube channel.  More to come… Second, there’s an event you may have heard of…  Junk Bonanza.  One day I will go.  Oh yes.  One day I will go.  Until then, if your calendar is free September 13-15, 2012, you may be able to go to Junk Bonanza for FREE!  The annual Junk Bonanza brings together more than 140 juried vendors of select vintage treasures, junk and antiques and is in Canterbury Park in Shakopee, Minn. The winner of this giveaway will receive: ~ 2 VIP tickets, which

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Miscellaneus

Patience is a virtue…

…and I know I’m really testing it!  I’ve been getting a lot of “will you just sell the milk paint to me already” kind of e-mails and comments over the last couple of weeks.  Here’s is why it’s taking so long…  I thought it was just going to be ME selling the paint at Lucketts and online.  I thought maybe we would bring a few retailers on board after I had some proven success.  It turns out that a lot of people want to join me on this journey, so I started with 15 retailers and then we just kept adding more until now we’re up to over 80 retailers and we have about 150 on hold until we’re ready to bring on more.   That doesn’t sound like too big of a deal, but when you consider that it’s just a few people putting all of this together, it’s a

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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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