A Regal Design with WoodUbend Mouldings and La magic Paint

This project was one, which even before I started and was mapping out the mouldings, I knew it was going to be special. I wasn’t wrong! It’s a heady mix of all my favourite things, stencilling, mouldings and striking colours. Let’s dive in and find out how this beauty came to be born.

Sometimes I like to embark on a project with no real end in mind, instead just letting it reveal itself as I work. This was not one of these cases. No, this table needed a little planning. So, first thing was first – I needed to decide where the mouldings were going. I’d opted for the intricate 2100 corner mouldings and their larger counterparts as well as the decorative 2095 to adorn the leg. Planning done, I had a fairly thorough idea of where I was headed with this project.

Well, the best laid plans…

First thing was first, I thought a bit of raised stencilling would add a touch of depth to the piece and complement the mouldings and lavish colour scheme. Plus, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to showcase the brand new Mystery Thorns stencil! La Magic Paint’s Materic Paste in hand, we were underway. The stencils are ultra durable, so can be rewashed and reused time after time and they make it super simple to create some fantastic designs!

I would like to say I used a bit of design intuition to alter my plan a little, but that would be a lie. I was advised to remove the borders off of the mouldings and apply them that way – the advice was correct as it gave the table a much more open, flowing feel. Luckily, it’s so easy to do this with WoodUbend, all I did was heat the mouldings up and slice off the borders using a craft knife. Easy peasy!

Let that be a lesson, try to avoid becoming blinkered when creating something. Often, fresh eyes see something you’ve missed.

Freshly altered mouldings in place, taking care with the placement as I still wanted the drawers to open after all! It was time for some painting! I was especially looking forward to this as La Magic paint is beautifully perfumed so using them is an olfactory treat.

A bit of an interesting colour scheme this week, I wanted a combination of greys, yellows and golds with one corner being grey, and the rest giving away to the brighter colours. Dark first. I opened up my London Fumè and began to map out the colours. The dark grey of the London Fumè would blend into the lighter Fleur du Sol and the Fleur du Sol into the bright yellow Souffle which would act as the perfect base for the golden Rococò.

Blending can be a bit of a tricky technique to master but there’s quite a bit of room for error. Often, I find your best friend is a water spritzer, keeping the paint wet means that it will move around much easier. Picking the correct colours is important too, the Fleur du Sol worked perfectly in this piece as a transition from the darker to the lighter colours – a bit of a buffer.

An interesting point to note is that when applying the golden Rococò to the Souffle base I used quite a stabbing motion with the brush, this helps create texture to the finish. I had planned to seal the project with some wax and the texture of the paint would give the wax something to work with, to adhere to, and really take it on board. This would give a rich look to the final finish.

Nearly there, grabbing a flat brush I wanted to really celebrate the mouldings, dry brushing with the Rococò would do just that. I knew the gold against these base colours would really bring the mouldings to life.

Once the paint had dried, all that was left was to apply the aforementioned wax – working brilliantly thanks to all the stabbing – and affix some drawer handles.

There we have it, La Magic and WoodUbend – great design partners!