Big Day for Brown Paper Booth!

We met Dona,  owner of When Modern Was at Alemany flea market, our first time selling.  She's fun, spunky, stylish, personable, incredibly talented and her store (located in Noe Valley, San Francisco) is right up BPB's alley.  If you're ever in SF, you must check it out. When she offered to buy some of our pieces to sell in her store we were...to say the least...freaking out!! (Boy she has great taste!) What an honor and compliment! Today we dropped off our first batch of furniture. We look forward to working with her for *years* to come! Here are some snap shots of our "big day". Including photos of a couple pieces already set up in the store!! 

Loading the truck...

 What a darling store front!

We think we fit right in!

Big, heart felt thank you to Dona and everyone at When Modern Was

Mercury Glass Mason Jar Tutorial

We LOVE the look of mercury glass anywhere in the home, any time of year. But if you've ever walked into pottery barn, you know how expensive a piece can be. So BPB's solution? Find a way to make our own! Emily had tons of Ball mason jars left over from her wedding so we decided to try it out on those. 

    

1. Start with a jar (any clear glass jar, we of course prefer something vintage, maybe a canning jar straight out of your grandma's hutch). 2. Tape off the front of the jar as spray paint travels. We used crosswords because who has time for those anyway. 

3. Buy this INCREDIBLE MAGIC looking glass spray paint from Krylon. You can google it to see if it is stocked in stores near you, we called every hardware store around us and none carried it! So we bought it on Amazon. The can is super tiny and cute compared to a normal spray paint can. But it goes a long way.

3. Water bottle. Mist setting. First, spray 2-3 times inside the jar. This paint is designed so the opposite side that is sprayed creates a mirror effect. If sprayed on the front, it's pretty, but just looks silver. The water gives the paint a distressed look. Now you spray paint! Shake shake shake first. Spray thin coats inside. 5-6 coats, waiting 1 min in between. Voila! 

We staged them with succulents, because they are our favorite low maintenance plant. But you could use them to put paint brushes, make-up brushes, spools of thread, etc etc. 

These were such a huge hit at Alameda Antique Faire, we sold a bunch! 

Duck Egg Blue

In case you haven't heard, there is literally a miracle paint for furniture called Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. It took BPB months to get our hands on some because it is relatively new to the US and there are only a few stockists in the greater Bay Area. We finally found a store that sold it nearby (The Pickled Hutch in San Mateo) and snatched up a can of Duck Egg Blue to try out. We had the perfect French Provincial dresser that we knew would look amazing when it was done. Let me tell you, this stuff is like liquid gold.

The dresser was an ugly yellow color with gold trim, and this weird shiny white top that almost felt like a dry-erase board.

The yellow + gold drawers

At least the drawer pulls were super cute

We got the dresser ready to be painted by cleaning it off with a damp rag and taping the drawers. THAT'S IT. No prepping, no priming, no sanding. This paint is a Brown Paper Booth-er's dream come true.

We've read that the paint is a little thicker than latex, and that a little goes a long way and covers really well. We weren't sure about the dry erase board-esque top, but it turned out that the paint went on no problem. (Also, please excuse the terribly colored photos... We started painting this at 5 pm one day and finished that night! Too excited not to snap pictures in the bad lighting.)

We finished the main body of the dresser with just one solid coat, plus some touch-ups. Same for the drawers! We put the drawers in and she looked so finished already.

We still need to wax the piece to finish it off (maybe some dark wax in the carved details??), but other than that, here she is, in all her duck egg blue glory:

Hey check out our Facebook!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brown-Paper-Booth/281253525256677

Alameda Antique Faire: Photo Recap

Alameda: We Came, We Saw, We Brown-Paper-Boothed

Alameda was a success! We got moved up to space F-1 (we're kind of a big deal) and had a great time at the antique faire. It's still sort of surreal that we had a booth here, where we love to shop and drool over all the beautiful antiques! Of course we felt like Brown Paper Booth was right at home.

BPB ladies in front of our booth! Don't mind the customer shopping away in the back




Here are a few previews of our day: