Upcycling an old shelf into a rustic plant stand

Upcycling an old shelf into a rustic plant stand

By Phoebe Peach
Creative Projects with Mezzie and Frank

We gave a tired old shelf a gorgeous rustic makeover using our chalk style paint range. We'll list below all the supplies we used:

- Mezzie and Frank Chalk Style Paint in the colour 'Sandbar'
- Mezzie and Frank Chalk Style Paint in the colour 'Whitehaven'
- Mezzie and Frank Hardy Clear Coat
- Paint stirrer/mixing stick
- Paintbrush 
- Stencil
- Microfibre cloth
- Paint sheet/drop sheet/old linen
- Sandpaper (we used 120 grit)

Before you begin you need to pick your paint! We used the colours Sandbar and Whitehaven, followed by Hardy Clear Coat as our top coat. 

First coat
First, we made sure the shelf was completely clean and dry. We had to give it a good brush down as it had quite a bit of dust and cob webs! Then we moved it onto a paint sheet, ready to paint. We started with Sandbar for the base colour and gave it a good mix using a paint stirrer before applying the first coat with a paint brush. We left the first coat to dry for a couple hours then came back and applied a second coat. 

Sanding
Once the second coat was dry we used sandpaper to sand back the paint to give it a worn, rustic look. We then used a damp cloth to wipe away any loose dust from sanding. 

Stencilling
For the stencilling we used Whitehaven and applied one coat with a paintbrush. We stuck the stencil down in each section using 4 small pieces of masking tape and did one section of each shelf at a time working our way down. Because chalk paint dries so quickly by the time the each shelf had been stencilled once you could start over again at the top doing a second section on each shelf and so on. For each section there was a slight overlap to keep to pattern continuing smoothly across the shelf. 

Sanding the stencilled paint
After leaving the paint to dry for a few hours we sanded over the stencilled paint to make it look worn and remove any unwanted splatters of paint. We then used a damp cloth to wipe away any loose dust from sanding. 

Final coat of paint
For the top coat we used Hardy Clear Coat, which is a clear acrylic sealer designed for sealing timber, chalk paint and mineral paint. We watered down the clear coat at a ratio of 90 parts paint/10 parts water to give it a smoother consistency and applied one coat. 

An alternative to using the Hardy Clear Coat as the finishing coat is using Gilly's Pure Hemp Oil or Gilly's Carnauba Polish.

Watch the whole process on Mezzie and Frank's Instagram

Leave any questions in the comments! 

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