Thrifted & Up Cycled furniture & DIY Paint makeover with paper clay, IOD moulds & white wax

[Music] I wasn't going to tell this story because it shows a side of me that is far from perfect but after all the YouTube drama this week it broke my heart to see so much condemnation we are all broken in one way or another so my hope is that by sharing this with you you might see that like most humans I have my moments and my flaws and in this modern world we could all use a little more grace and love in this life [Music] [Applause] I've been sitting here staring at the seahorse dresser procrastinating instead of getting in front of the camera because the story that goes with this dresser you may or may not judge me but I'm telling it anyway I made a dresser and I put a giant seahorse on the front people ask me all the time where do you get your ideas from lemon pools and movie stars movie stars what's happening up here the wheels turn and it usually starts percolating and then it leads to this thing which leads to that thing and then I go down a few rabbit holes and I chase a few squirrels this is a rambling sidetrack squirrel chasing story about how the seahorse dresser came out of my brain DIY paint is very unique and versatile because it's clay based the clay allows you to easily build texture or create a smooth watered-down finish you can water down DIY paint 10 to 1 because our paint has six times the pigmentation of your average paint and it's just nine ingredients because this paint is so highly concentrated it's a good idea to use a mr. spray bottle full of water I like to spritz the surface first and then spray in between as I move my brush across the surface this helps get nice even coverage with a very minimal amount of paint [Music] down a steep road looking up as pops why meet the oxtail in with the pita so I stepped outside and had a free shot by summer Indian woods from the turquoise iris and cuida from all shab doubt they flew to California and we taught a class at my shop usually when I teach classes I have everybody bring a piece of furniture and we all paint together Dionne and Q they don't do it that way they stand on a stage it's like a performance and they paint the whole piece of furniture in a couple of hours so I just invited them to my store but then they started advertising the class saying all three of us were gonna teach oh okay I guess I could do it too I can't paint a piece of furniture in two hours I have to obsess over it I have to tweak it I have to second-guess it you know Dionne and Q it's like a magic show they get out all the colors and they start blending and they start spraying and they start scraping and then it's like a poof here is this incredible work of art I don't want to do it I just want to be in the class I'll help the students all give everybody bottles of water no they paid for the tickets thinking that you were gonna paint yeah just watch me now just watch me just watch me now do the Watchmen I made a seahorse Pinterest board so I would have a point of reference for this because I don't draw well I use chalk so I could erase and adjust my sketch as needed a link my Pinterest board in the description box if there weren't for this one thing it would be totally fine to just get a half way piece of furniture done it's not that I was worried that they would look better than me I already know that they're better than me you buy a ticket to the class you look under your seat and if there's a little golden ticket then you're the winner of the furniture it were three winners because there was the three of us they're all waiting for us to perform everybody loves Dion she's just so hostess like and then there's Q she's kind of larger than life and then there's me and I'm quiet and I'm worried when it comes for my turn to talk just so you know I am probably not going to finish my piece of furniture so whoever wins it you're gonna have to be patient and I was thinking it would be like three months but I wanted to say it would be a year because I needed to give myself a cushion the end of the class everybody's happy the poor lady who wins my piece of furniture is looking at me like is it really going to be a year the dresser that I started was the dresser that I made in the last videos I had that picture from Anthropologie a year ago I'm excited about it but the IOD molds are sold out and I need all the molds to finish the video I use the same molds and paper clay for the seahorse that I used in the last video it's better to glue the molds down before they dry so they adhere well to your surface without curling up [Music] this project took three packs of clay and several hours to make the molds but I got a great tip from Marla fey of vintage retail therapy she puts her molds in the freezer to use later so they won't dry out I'll add a link to Mara's website below [Music] these amazing products are made by iron orchid design we sell the molds and the clay at my store in Solana Beach we also teach classes check the link below for more details I like to attach my molds by brushing wood glue onto the backs you can also use white tacky glue for this but I would not use hot glue [Music] i order all the IOD stuff from my store i get my whole box of goodies i rip it open and i'm gonna finish that dresser but there is no molds in the box all the molds that i ordered were on backorder so i put a tarp over the dresser and it's in the back yard of my store and then i go to boot camp and sally and Josie are there I get them kind of backed into a corner I need to know when are the molds coming they're telling me that the molds are gonna take a while molds would not be available for like another six months right no they're not coming so I just move on I make other videos and then finally they're shipped I'm stoked I go out into the backyard I lift up the tarp and there was a hole in the tarp so if the dresser had been rained on and the top of the dresser was completely warped it was bowed like a rainbow and I had to send it to the dump and I had to look for another dresser the molds dry slowly in about 24 hours this gives you time to move them around and change your mind it's sort of like a jigsaw puzzle there's no right or wrong I cut several down and used a knife to cut them where the drawers line up I [Music] could have laid the dresser flat but I wanted to get a good perspective so I kept it upright and held the molds in place with painters tape [Music] and I finished the dresser this is the best piece of furniture that I have ever done and the crazy thing about it was it just flowed I have this vision in my head and then the vision doesn't want to come out but with this dresser it looked even better than I thought it would look and that never happens and everyone who came to my house and saw it in real life told me the video isn't as good as what it really is I loved it and then I remembered that I had to give it to the lady in Wyoming and I did not want to give it to her I was selfish about it great this is the one piece of furniture that I love more than anything and I have to give it away and it's not fair and I thought of the verse in the Bible that says God loves a cheerful Giver I'm not cheerful giver I'm not sure faux Giver at all I want to keep this thing I don't even want to sell it even if I could get the price that anthropology was selling their dresser for I don't think I would have sold it okay well maybe I can get out of it I watered my paint down about 50 percent so I could get into all the nooks and crannies you can see here that DIY paint dries very fast and just about covers in one coat [Music] is the color weathered wood because I wanted a driftwood finish it goes on dark and dries to a warm saturated gray [Music] all the times it's crushing us the deal was whoever won the piece of furniture the person had to agree to pay for the shipping because I call up Dion how do I ship this piece of furniture to Wyoming and Dion has a guy his name is James and he goes all across the country picking up furniture for all the people in our artist circle ask James how much it would cost and be sure you show him a picture of it because this piece needs special White Glove care inside I was hoping that it would cost so much money that the girl in Wyoming would be like oh forget it I can't do it Dion gets back to me and she tells me that it's gonna be $400 okay that's a lot of money so I email her and I tell her that I totally understand that that's a crazy high price to pay I will send you some paint instead of the dresser so that you don't have to pay the shipping and you can get $200 worth of paint oh no I want the dresser great there it goes it's gone it's out of here if I don't send it to her then I'm gonna look really really bad it's not this lady's fault do you won the dresser she should have the dresser i sat on my couch if you're that sad about it then maybe you should make another one [Music] to get dark paint into the tiny areas I use the new detail brushes from the turquoise iris I'll put a link to Dion's brushes below [Music] okay Debbie think what's the lesson how can you be a better person about this maybe you can make something else that's even better and you can make it different enough that people will still want to watch the video and it will be a blessing in disguise yes that seems like a good plan and I will have taken it to the next level what can I do with those molds I was thinking that I was gonna make a giant mermaid tail and I thought about a sand dollar I decided that I was gonna make it into a big starfish nope that's not it that's not it okay what about a seahorse I love seahorses I've always loved seahorses so I'm looking up this seahorse and I'm thinking you could make it really big and then you could fill it in with the molds and I'm looking at the seahorse and I create a whole Pinterest board of seahorses and then there was this voice in my head that could turn out really bad you don't know how to draw how are you gonna do it you're gonna get an overhead projector are you gonna take a seahorse image and send it to Staples and have them blow it up to the size of the dresser and then cut it out so I don't want to do that that sounds like a lot of work I could do it I could do it I could draw it in chalk I'll just keep erasing it and drawing it until I get it right I draw stick people this thing could take three weeks to do and if it turns out bad then you have wasted three weeks and you won't have a video look Debbie if you make this seahorse and it turns out bad you still have to make the video you have to show people that sometimes things don't work out you're gonna use it for your channel as a learning experience you're gonna put yourself out there you're gonna be vulnerable I said okay I'm gonna do it I wanted the details to pop against the dark gray so I used our synthetic wax brush and a heavy coat of white wax to get into all the low spots of the molds then I wipe back the excess however all the white wax was too much and created a blotchy uneven finish light wax over dark gray can look like driftwood which was what I was hoping for but in this case I just put too much on a whole day of making molds and gluing them on this was like a little war going on in my head you've never even done a canvas art everybody in my whole do retailers group they're all painting canvasses and Deion's sketching naked ladies and I don't know how to do that but yet I'm making this giant seahorse who do you think you are and I just kept telling that side of my brain Dhin be quiet I smeared a whole bunch of white wax all over the seahorse's it kind of went off the edges so then I had to put white wax over the whole dresser kind of hot mess it looked like smeared patches and then I had to stop because Jamie ray was coming to visit me and Jamie has her own YouTube channel all of Jamie's furniture is very refined nothing is is too whimsical with her here she comes she's gonna look at my piece of furniture and she's gonna see Oh Debbi he made a piece of furniture that isn't that good oh she shows up and she's like I like it and I could tell that she sort of liked it but she didn't really love it because it still needed work Jamie was here for four days it's been in progress now since the last video which was over a month ago I stare at it every day I analyze it I pick it apart let's go after Jamie left I went back with clear wax using it like an eraser this toned down the white and created the weathered look that I wanted as well as contrast between the seahorse and the rest of the dresser [Music] the Hey fortress of doubt like a prisoner seeing no way out but I'm reaching no there's no way I'm staying I got the clear wax out I started erasing a lot of the white wax I started distressing it and it started looking good this is it this is the seahorse this is this is pretty much what I had in my brain almost as good not quite as good as what I was hoping for but 80% good maybe you have been looking at this dresser for so long that you just talked yourself into the fact that it's good because you are invested in it now no it's good it's cool it's really good what if it's just strange okay I'm gonna post a teaser a picture to my facebook page and I'm going to see what the response is so I take a picture of half the dresser you can't see the whole seahorse but you can basically figure out that it's a seahorse so I post it I'm hitting the refresh button I'm waiting for a comment to come in and then I get a comment and the comment is one word and it's the word Wow now Wow can mean Wow or it can mean Wow and then Sally and Joe see see it from iron orchid designs I'm like oh oh no they they there's their taste is totally different than mine they like the the more refined European sophisticated looks they believe the most wonderful common okay maybe it's good it gets the most likes and the most shares that I've ever gotten on Facebook ever Wow people do like it I just worked myself up into a creative mess [Music] I believe creativity is like a muscle as you push against the resistance and the fear you get stronger I want to encourage you to keep building your creative muscle and if you're interested I have a membership group here on YouTube all about unlocking creativity it's just five dollars a month you can cancel it any time the link is in the description box to see your song [Music] the same [Music] when people ask me how do you get your creative ideas sometimes it's born out of selfishness or whatever you want to call it and I feel like I need to apologize to that lady now I know that you probably have no idea that I didn't want to send it to you and now you know but the dresser is exactly where it should be thanks for watching and please don't judge me and I will see you in the next video let me know in the comments if you've ever made something that's pushed you out of your comfort zone to find DIY paint in your area or to sell DIY paint in your store or to visit my store in Solana Beach click the link below I'm telling you I just came [Applause]

Channel: Debi's Design Diary

Views: 80,810

Keywords: painting furniture, boho decor, beach decor, beach boho, moulds and furniture, furniture moulds, moulds and clay, seahorse, home decor, coastal decor, thrift store decor

Id: cpTBzoSxXSo

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2019