From Flea Market Find to Romantic French Furniture

Decorative Painting / French Style / Hand Painted Art Furniture / Upcycling Furniture
finished principal painting surface 2

I have to admit that I don’t like flea markets. Now I know that my friends in blogland might be cringing but I can’t help it. The row upon row of things that don’t interest me and the time wasted fighting the crowds generally make me crazy. They just aren’t my scene. Honestly, I am a pretty awful shopper. I would rather dig a ditch than go to a shopping mall so my dislike of a flea market is no big surprise.

But….Cathy drug me along to one this summer and most of it went exactly as I expected. Row after row of things that we didn’t need or want and a very busy throng of other anxious shoppers.

I was hungry, a bit grumpy and ready to go, but Cathy is a person that must complete a task so we had to walk through every last aisle. I kid you not….we were in the very last aisle, ready to walk to the car and I spotted this cabinet.

It was in rough shape with some of the veneer lifting and the finish was not nice at all but, the price was right and it was structurally sound. In addition, I loved the old mirror, the French lines and the multi-functionality of the piece. It started life as a cabinet to hold sheet music but now could be a lovely linen cabinet or any kind of wonderful storage unit. So, Cathy felt vindicated, I was happy and life was good.

Home it went to the garage from hell…basically a storage shed for vintage furniture awaiting our attention. It sat there all summer and fall until last week. I got sick of moving it so in it came.

Decision time. I knew that I didn’t want to distress this piece and I also knew that I wanted to do a French floral treatment so I did some research. I decided that I would use a two tone color scheme, French Blue and Creme, and that I would treat the main door as the principal painting surface. I also decided to create a cartouche on the main door and surround it with French looking scrolls. I love to paint scrolls and they frame a painting so well.

So I based the piece using these colors. Sorry, I had already removed the back mirror and forgot to put it back on for the photo.

I then created the scrolls on the door and spent a few very pleasant hours painting the floral composition. Here is a picture of the door before the painting and after the painting with some closeups of some of the flowers.

 

 

I am so thrilled with our new French cabinet. Use it to store books, catalogues, linens, or anything you would like. This one is going to our booth but we are going to enjoy it in this spot for a little while.

 

 

 

Have a great week and thanks for visiting.

Until next time,

Paul

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