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What is French Country Style?
French Country Style is a lovely mix of traditional and modern, with heirlooms coexisting beside just-picked flowers. The overall feeling of this style would be soft femininity…and this is where our Golden Twist comes into play! With its variation on typical cottage design elements like antiques or old furniture–you can’t go wrong when creating an inviting space for guests at your stunning French country home (Or any other type of home!)
This blog guides you through the details and techniques used to create our French Cottage themed desk – with a golden touch!
Start with the base
We started by sanding down the desk with some high-grade sandpaper; this smoothed our surface making it a lot easier to apply the products.
The wood was covered with a layer of La Magic Paint, ‘Tortorelle’. We chose a muted grey colour as we wanted to create a light undertone. Once the first layer was dry, we applied a second, constantly changing the direction of the brush strokes to create a textured look.
Time for the WoodUbend
Once the paint has dried, we turned our heads towards our favourite bendable mouldings – WoodUbend! We decided to use a pair of 6068 embellishments.
As always, start by heating your WoodUbend applique with either a griddle, a hairdryer or a heat gun. Continue by applying your good quality wood glue to the entire back of the wooden moulding. You can apply the furniture decorations to almost any surface. Once on your designated substrate, reheat the WoodUbend trim or moulding and push down hard. This allows all the excess glue to seep out the edges. Excess glue can be cleaned up with a wet paintbrush, wet wipe or a cotton bud.
Next, we took another 3rd generation WoodUbend moulding 6007 to decorate the drawers. The main centrepiece 1233 was placed in between the drawers and acts as a real focal point for the project.
Now for the WoodUbend trim, we chose TR700 and carefully crafted it to fit on both corners of the piece. The trim was slightly wider than the surface but this wasn’t a problem. As the WoodUbend mouldings and trims have the same properties as wood, we were able to slice, shave and sand the product so it fits perfectly!
Stencilling
We coated our Posh Chalk ‘Mystery Thorns’ Stencil with La Magic’s Materic cream. The design is displayed symmetrically on both sides of the desk. For the edges, we decided to fan out some of the Materic cream to avoid a sudden cut of the raised design.
On top of the desk, we created a wash using a spritz of water and Posh Chalk Precious Paste in ‘White Gold’. We then applied the Posh Chalk ‘Dainty Trellis’ Stencil and used an array of Posh Chalk Pastes including, Brown Van Dyke, White Gold and 24K Gold. We managed to achieve the result we were looking for, to have a faint reminder of all the colours used throughout the project without the design being overbearing.
Golden Hour
The last hour before sunset, and an important part of our desks transformation. We smothered a generous amount of the Posh Chalk 24K Gold Paste all over the desk, including the stencilling. As the Posh Chalk Pastes are water based we used a spritz of water to help the pastes glide along the surface. The pastes also contain a self sealant which means we didn’t have to seal the project afterwards.
Know the Drill
As you may know, WoodUbend mouldings have all the properties of wood. This means that in their cold state you can drill through them. This was necessary for the 6007 appliques as we needed a hole to attach the drawer handles.
Larger WoodUbend mouldings, such as 1260 may need a little more encouragement than just wood glue, especially as we wanted the moulding to be standing upright on top of the desk. This wasn’t a problem though as we drilled the moulding to fit into the desk.
Toning down and brightening up the Gold
To unify the tone of the project, we lightly applied La Magic’s liquid wax, ‘Noyer Clair’. This achieved the colour we were after, but not the overall effect. The finishing touch was our Posh Chalk ‘White Gold’ Paste from the Precious Collection. The smooth light paste gave the desk a metallic look and subtly brightened the whole project.
Why not check out our YouTube channel? Click here to watch ‘The Creation of: The Gold Desk’ from beginning to end.
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