Welcome to my Blog, my name is Mandy or as my friends call me, "The Shabby Chick". My passion apart from arts and crafts is interior design. I hope you will find a lot of inspiration throughout my site and please remember to visit the shop and my blog. In the shop you will find my furnishings mostly designed and created by me using natural fabrics such as burlap, jute and cotton. I take my design inspiration mostly from old French artwork and New England design to give that timeless elegance to enhance any room. I will be looking to add many other complementary products to the shop in the near future to develop my unique style.It all started for me when I saw an old chest of draws at our recyling centre. It was your typical dark oak, worm eaten and chipped unloved item that most people would not look twice at; however there was a certain timeless charm associated with it. It had the most beautiful Queen Anne legs and a gorgeous shape to it. As I always liked painted and distressed furniture, so I decided to purchase the unit for the grand sum of £5.00. I am sure my husband initially thought I was mad, but thats quite normal, anyway I set to work.
Armed with plain undercoat and a french grey base coat I set to work, removing the handles, draws and applying both the undercoat followed by the French grey base coat. It was already starting to look gorgous, once dry the next task was to rub candle wax on all extremities that would typify natural ware and tare. This was followed by a coat of Pointing by Farrow & Ball which is one of my favourite creamy/white colours as you will begin to realise when you follow me! Once dry, I lightly rubbed the extremities with a very fine sandpaper. Once the final paint coat had dryed, I then coated the whole unit with bees wax on very fine wire wool. The finish was absolutely stunning and the wire wool made the paintwork so smooth it felt like bone! After a lot of searching I also found the ideal crystral door handles which further complemented the finished piece.
After this I was hooked. From here I started to design cushions and table runners using tradional natural fabrics. My designs take inspiration from old French advertising designs and I decided that these would make great artwork for the cushions. So without further ado we researched how to print onto them and realised we could make the most exquisite designs!
I hope you find our site inspiring and please do add comments to my blog or Facebook, we always welcome feedback.
Lots of Love
