denise...on a whim: Shabby Little Shelves

This little shabby shelf was once just a lowly frame with an ugly picture and a broken mirror. And now it's a fabulous blue shelving unit! The mirror wasn't originally broken, but I broke it when I removed it from the frame. Oops. I guess it's seven year's bad luck for me. Now, isn't that just great! :)

But enough about my misfortunes. On to the project.

The front of the shelf, with the little upholstery tacks in the corners and the curvy half-dowel elements, was the frame.

The picture in it was horrific. Really, it was. So I knew I'd be removing that. I decided to take the mirror out as well (bad luck ensuing from said removal), thinking I would use some burlap or drop cloth to make a sign out of it.

I roughly painted the frame in Pittsburgh Gray and used some Vintage White on the dowel areas.

Then it sat. For awhile.

It came to me, all of a sudden, like it usually does, that this would look very nice as the front of a cabinet. So I gave it to Eric to work his magic. And the shelves were born!

Once the cabinet was done, I thought about what color to paint it. I had just finished a Cheval Mirror project (I'm sharing that next week and I'm very excited!) on which I had used Aubusson Blue with a Kentucky Mint dry-brush technique. I guess I must have liked it because I decided to go with the same finish on these little shelves! And I used a similar technique on the industrial cabinet I showed you the other day.

Here's another shot of the paint finish.

Once I had used the Kentucky Mint on the Aubusson, I decided to go over the Vintage White on the frame part with it, too. It's a very subtle green there and I like that. I dry-brushed some on the back of the inside, too.