What a Beachy Cabinet

Where oh where do I begin with this cabinet?! 

I guess I can start by saying I picked up this one of a kind piece from someone who just didn't want it anymore. They were getting rid of it and I saw the potential and said I would take it with the intention of fixing it up real nice. Well, long story short, it got moved from room to room for years until finally I couldn't stand it anymore!

Here are the before pictures.

So, what I did, was paint this cabinet blue. I was planning on sanding it a bit to get a little bit of a distressed look. Then I was going to put white lace on the back of each shelf to give it a country look.

Buuuuuut...needless to say, it didn't work out that way AT ALL. I was so frustrated with this cabinet because everything I seemed to do just wasn't working for me. First of all, I put waaaaaay to many coats of blue paint on it so trying to sand it was a miserable task. Then, to top that off, the places that I did sand it down to show the wood, you couldn't even see it! The wood was so light that it just blended with the wood and when I tried to put a glaze on it, the blue just looked muddied.

So it sat in my garage for about 6 months, half done, and me having some very awful feelings towards it.

Then, I decided one day that I just had to do something with this thing and get it out of my life! 

So, I painted white on the outside (just one coat this time, boy did I learn my lesson with that blue paint!) and lightly distressed it to see the blue coming through the white and then called it a day.

After all that trouble that I put myself through, I think it didn't turn out so bad after all! It has such a beachy feel to it and I wish I would have gotten some better pictures before it sold!!!

Hope you enjoy it more that I did ;-)

Cheers,

Shannon

Awesomeness at the Topanga Vintage Market

So, this past weekend (10/28) we had the pleasure of getting a booth at the Topanga Vintage Market (Click here for more info!). It's definitely a great place to get great antiques, collectibles and odds-n-ends, especially with the holidays coming up so soon!!

Last month we had a booth as well and Topanga Vintage Market actually featured our booth on their Facebook page! Super exciting, check it out here!

Here are a few pictures from this past weekend, hope you enjoy them!

Cheers,

Shannon

Love Me Vintage- EST 2012

What the heck is Love Me Vintage?!?

Get ready, cause that's what I'm going to tell you.

It all started back in 2008 when I came across 2 very cool pieces of furniture that someone was giving away. One was a tall cabinet with glass doors, the top of it looked like the top of a heart. The second one was a small 4 drawer dresser that had an extremely ugly finish (it's to bad I didn't get before pictures to blind you with). Anyways, when I snagged the furniture I thought to myself "One day I'm going to paint these or do something to them to make them awesome". 

Long story short, years went by and it never happened. Each piece kept getting moved from the garage to my daughters room and back to the garage.

Then, lo and behold, in the beginning of 2012 it happened AGAIN! I found a totally awesome antique dresser for FREE! This time, since I had been laid off and wasn't working, I decided this is it! I'm going to paint this dresser. And guess what?!? I did it and it was awesome.

And that is when the magic really started. It became very apparent that painting furniture was something that I absolutely LOVED doing and I was good at it and it was something I definitely wanted to keep doing. So here I am today, still painting furniture, taking custom orders and absolutely loving it.

Now on to "Love Me Vintage". One day I was text chatting with my sister trying to come up with a business name...I had such a hard time trying to come up with something original. Ever since I was introduced to the antique store "Whimsy" in Carpenteria, I loved the name and knew I wanted something original like that but completely different at the same time. And of course, my brilliant sisters where just the ones to talk to! We were trying to come up with different names, putting words together and making up words and nothing made sense or sounded good until we came up with Frivical. 

Frivolous. Practical. FRIVolous. PractICAL. FRIVICAL! Get it!! And Fancy just flowed so nicely with it.

Confusted yet? hehehe...

Frivical Fancy was the first name that I used, but after a countless number of people not being able to either pronounce it or understand it, I decided it was time for a change. I needed to come up with something easier to say and understand so I recruited my trusty Facebook friends to help me out!

So there you have it! The beginning of Love Me Vintage.

And by the way- The cabinet and the first dresser I found did eventually get a makeover :)

Well, that's it for now, check back later for some awesome before and after pictures (and in some cases, just the afters)!

Cheers,
Shannon