Gathering Branches

It is always amazing to me that this little show of mine actually works. My friends and I make the stuff, send out emails, put out the chalkboard door signs, and cross our fingers that people will actually show up. And they do. I am always surprised when the first customer walks in on the day of the show, especially if they aren't someone I know.

I was super thrilled that about a third of our customers were new to us. They were mostly people who saw the street signs and came by to check us out. It was also exciting that many were repeat customers. Thanks for coming back. And there will always be a special place in my heart for my friends who put up with listening to me talk ad nauseum about all this show and art stuff and then are sweet enough to come to the show and see it for real as well. Thank you all so much! You have no idea how validating your presence and interest is.

Thank you! thank you! thank you!

Here are some pics just before the show opened (You'll have to pardon the unattractive flash. It was overcast and I only have lamps for light in the first room:

So that should give you a feel for what we do here at Branches. Thanks for popping in!

I have been feverishly preparing for the Branches spring show this week. I had the luxury of having 2 days of extended "child free" time on Thursday and Friday last week to finish things. There is just such freedom in done. (You can read a great post about this, along with a shamefully kind promo of yours truly, written by my friend Erica here on her blog, the Shady Elm) Sadly, while many things for the show are done, everything is not. So today I am shooting pictures and sending emails and rearranging furniture. But in honor of all the things that are finished, this post is all about a little friend of mine named Jasper.

Jasper has been with us since my sister moved back to AZ about 10 years ago. She loved him, but he just couldn't fit in her car with all the other stuff she was taking. And we have loved him. He's a trusty little modern lined side table with a cherry finish. My dearly beloved resin frog, King Rupert, the Fat and Happy, has called Jasper home for about 5 years.

Things for Jasper really started to change this January, when I got on a "I'm going to finish this, if it's the last thing I do" kick. I decided to finish stripping a side table that had been sitting in my studio for about 2 years under a shower curtain. And I actually succeeded. I know. Shock, right? Poor Jasper though. He lost his home and was relegated to the dining room, where he was really just kind of in the way.

So he sat there for a few months in the shadows, until I started to chalk paint. My sister is one of my better sounding boards and she and I had been talking Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. One thing she kept bringing up as we talked about color and technique was what the Antibes Green and Barcelona Orange would look like layered. Now, this is a girl who lives in Portland, Oregon and never met a green she didn't love. Seriously. I have never met anyone with more green striped t-shirts than my sister. I think she must have one for every day of the month. So it would follow suit that she would fantasize about green and orange tables. Plus the Portland aesthetic can totally take a green and orange table. That would be a much harder sell here in Northern Virginia. But I digress..... anyway, I was driving somewhere one day, thinking about painting stuff and it hit me! I could redo Jasper in the orange and green she had been talking about and ship it to her for her birthday in May!

So I set to work. Here is a picture approximating what Jasper looked like before I started. Please disregard the poor lighting. I forgot to take a before pic, so I just used the back lighting to give you guys a feel for where our story starts, with the dark cherry finish. Lame, I know, but I just get so excited to transform this stuff.....you understand, right?

So I wanted a green table with orange showing through the paint. So in the beginning, Jasper was orange with green accents. I purposely broke up the strokes and built a grain, so that when I sanded, I would get a lot of texture, preferably in a kind of fire stich pattern.

Here's what he looked like with the second coat of orange:

Coat number three is the actual look, with the green on the top and legs and a few coats of orange on the neck.

And I thought I'd add a few hits of Emperor's Silk, a flaming hot Chinese red, just for a little...um...pizazz.

At this point, Jasper was looking a little "party in Tijuana". Thank heavens for wax.

Wax. It really IS the secret ingredient to ASCP (Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, for those of you just tuning in). It just makes everything look so much chic-er. Less country. More expensive. Love that!

Ok, enough dilly-dally-ing. You all want to see the "after" pics? Here you go:

Major transformation, right? That last one kills me. I had wanted a more industrial look, and I just walked into my studio to see the light just right. Love it when that happens.

So for those of you that thought that ASCP couldn't go modern, here's Jasper, on his way to Portland, land of the industrial look. I hope he enjoys his new, green home.

BTW, the @ in the above photo is part of the Branches spring show. Come see it in person, along with a bunch more stuff including all this moss