09/21/2025
Here are some better photos of my French Balloon Chair. The velvet seat was painted with a 50/50 mix of Paint Couture Paint Sea Glass and Peacock, stirred into purified water.
The process was relatively simple for the upholstery. It was stripping the very very thick white paint off of the wood and caning. These chairs had to have been litterally dunked into a vat of white paint, because it was so thick and embedded everywhere That, my friends, was a nightmare. I purposely left small remnants of the paint on the wood - to give the piece a more vintage, chippy look. After stripping and cleaning, I created a gel stain, using my Paint Couture Clear Glaze mixed with a bit of Espresso and Pinecone, with a little purified water, until I got the rich stain color I wanted. That was sprayed onto the cane and brushed onto the frame. I sealed the wood with a high quality wax, and sealed the seat and upholstery with a spritz of my Dead Flat topcoat added to some water in my sprayer. After hand sanding the velvet with 220 grit sandpaper, that velvet is as “soft as a baby’s bottom” as my grandma used to say.
It will be a few, before I tackle the second chair - because I need a break from all that cane detail work. It was intense. Haha. How do you think the chair turned out? Did you prefer it white with the gray upholstery? I know initially, a few people said they liked that better, and I shouldn’t change them.
