Christmas at Loot

We decorated Loot at the beginning of November and it is hard to believe that Christmas is nearly upon us.

I wanted to share a few pictures from the shop before it is time to un-decorate.

I love the tiny, felt owls!

I made several sheet music wreaths, like the ones I made last year, for the shop.

We ordered lots of cute ornaments for Loot this year, including these darling mushrooms.

This post is linked to the parties on my sidebar.

Chateau Gray Dresser

This vintage dresser is one of my favorite curbside finds.

While I was visiting my sister in Southern California, we were, as usual, out yard saling, when we spotted this vintage dresser at the end of a driveway with this sign posted on it.  I mean, I would have paid $15 for this beauty at a yard sale and here I was picking it up for free! 

It was in pretty good shape when I found it, besides the missing hardware.  My biggest concern was being able to replace the hardware since that can get pricey, especially when there are 18 places drilled in the dresser where hardware used to be. 

I decided to simplify and, so I patched all the previous hardware holes with wood putty before painting.  

While I was helping a customer decide on a Chalk Paint color for her newly purchased armoire, we painted a sample board with Chateau Gray and then applied dark wax.  I loved how the Chateau Gray looked with dark wax over it, so I decided to try it on this dresser.  Chateau Gray seems to be a misnomer because it is truly a shade of green.  I think it is close to the popular decorator color a few years back called sage green.

I was not sure what hardware I wanted for this piece, so I patched all the holes, figuring I could redrill them later, once I picked which hardware I wanted.  This dresser sure looked plain without any knobs.  

I decided I wanted oil rubbed bronze bin pulls for this dresser.  I went to Home Depot to check out the prices and  there was no way I was paying $5.99 per bin pull on a dresser I got for free.  I originally planned on putting two pulls per drawer, so that would have been over seventy dollars plus tax.  I searched on Ebay and found these lovely, oil rubbed bronze bin pulls for only two dollars a piece.

After I got the bin pulls in the mail, I had Nancy hold them up on the drawers and we decided the dresser looked better with just one pull in the center of each drawer. 

I have to give credit to Mr. Rubbish, whose excellent math and spatial skills came in handy, for locating and drilling the two holes required for each bin pull to line up exactly centered on each drawer.

This dresser sold at Loot this past weekend after being at the shop for less than a week.  Not bad for a roadside find!

This post is linked to the parties on my sidebar.

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint at Loot!

Nancy and I are happy to be new retail partners of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint!  We are now stocking all 29 colors of Chalk Paint and waxes at Loot!  

I know I did not blog at all last week, but we have been so busy with everything going on at Loot!  We got back from a two-day, train-the-trainer, Chalk Paint workshop last Friday night.  Then, we had to have all the paint unloaded and displayed at Loot by Saturday.

Here is Nancy, armed with her paint brush, at the intensive Chalk Paint workshop we attended last week.  The workshop was held at 3 Oaks Studio in Clovis, CA.  Vicki, who is the California Distributor of Chalk Paint, taught us so many amazing techniques in her lovely studio.

Vicki taught us new ways to use Chalk Paint and we are looking forward to sharing what we learned at our workshops at Loot. Even though we have been using Chalk Paint for several months, we still learned new, impressive techniques and hints for using the paint and waxes to achieve so many different looks.

Vicki and her husband host weddings on their amazing property during the spring and summer.  It looks like a dream location for a wedding, doesn't it?

One of the new techniques Vicki showed us was how to use the new Annie Sloan Craqueleur.  This is a sample I painted at the workshop with crackled Old White, topped with dark wax. The Craqueleur was so easy to use and created impressive results.  We are looking forward to stocking some Craqueleur at Loot in the near future.

Nancy and I are excited to be teaching our first Chalk Paint workshop at Loot tomorrow morning!

Loot is Ready for Christmas

Tomorrow we are having a holiday open house at Loot.  Nancy and I have been working hard decorating the shop for Christmas.

If you are in the area, stop by for our open house Christmas Party!

Loot

3011 Main St.

Soquel, CA

11am-4pm

Nancy decorated the whole front room, including the mantle that she painted with Graphite Chalk Paint.

One of our friends gave us this beautiful counter for our back room.  We finally have a place to set the cash register.  We are starting to feel like a real shop!

This is Santa's Workshop, a.k.a. the back room of Loot.  This is where we work on all of our projects, furniture and crafts when Loot is not open.  Now that we are open every weekend through the holidays, it was time to do some serious cleaning.

We have accumulated quite a bit of merchandise and projects, so we had a lot of work to do to get organized before we could even decorate for Christmas!

Somehow we pulled it together (just don't look outside, around the corner, under the giant tarp).  

Nancy bought a bunch of plants, including white hydrangeas, paperwhites and mini trees for our outside garden area.

Happy Holidays!