DIY Inlay Foot Stool

Here's the newest little addition to our house. 

It's a DIY Indian inlay foot stool painted using a stencil kit. 

  Here's what it looked like before.  I used Annie Sloan Graphite for the base and cream colored craft paint for the stencil.  The top got recovered in burlap, because I figure that's the most durable finish I can find for a foot stool. 

 The foot stool was really a practice run for a gigantic vintage mirror I'm painting for my business, Claremont Finders Keepers.  If you look closely, you'll see a few smudges and places where I ran one stenciled area over the other.  I don't mind these small imperfections on my own pieces, but for the business, I want my work to be really good.   And this really was a great way to learn how to paint with a stencil and work out all the kinks since I had never painted with one before.  

 Here is the stencil I used from Cutting Edge Stencils.  It comes in five different pieces so you can mix and match to create your own design.  Fun, and kind of addictive.  I'm about half way done with the mirror and will be sure to show pictures when it is finished -- which will be before our next booth at the Alameda Point Antiques Fair on November 4th.  If the mirror sells, I think I'll try my hand at a small chest next.  Perhaps something like this:

Wisteria

Thanks Charmaine, for bringing this to my attention!