★ A Jewelry Box Revival ★

I received this old jewelry box from my mother-in-law several years ago.  She was trying to sell it at a tag sale, but there were no buyers.  It's huge!  It has a ton of space, so I thought it was a shame to let it go to waste.  I wasn't crazy about the color scheme (I'm not a fan of bright red and shiny brass pulls), but at that time I didn't care too much.  Well, in our new home our bedroom is a mixture of turquoise and a sea foam-y color, so the red jewelry box didn't exactly match.  It has been sitting on the top shelf of my closet collecting dust, and every time I opened the closet I had the urge to do something with it.  I mean, I loved it, but just didn't love those colors...

Lately I have been reading blogs of people who take old furniture and revive it.  I've seen some pieces that I have drooled over... and I thought... I should try that.  At first, I was trying to decide what my first project would be.  I knew I needed a practice project, (it's not smart to take a paintbrush to a big piece of furniture in your home without perfecting your technique, right?) so I thought this jewelry box would be a perfect practice piece.

Before

After

I didn't realize until now that this "after" photo makes it look a little intimidating.  Maybe I'll take another and swap it out... but for now, you get the idea.

Of course, it's not perfect, but I think it's a pretty good start.  I like the distressing around the edges (you can't see it much in this photo, but the lighting was terrible and the camera didn't want to focus on anything but the front of it).  Some things that I would do differently on my next project would be to sand the paint in between coats (there are a lot of obvious brush strokes) and use a glaze instead of a wash... the wash really accentuates the brush strokes even more.  I didn't want to go out and buy a glaze without trying the wash first, because I had all the materials needed for a wash.  But I think the wash added too much black, and came out a little blotchy.  I will be making a trip to home depot at some point to purchase a glaze... lesson learned!  But it has a new home on my dresser (it pretty much takes up the whole top of it!) and I will keep it, unchanged, because it was my first project and now I feel a connection with it!