Hidden fairy roll top desk

One of my life rules is that I don’t pick up old furniture that people have left by the curb. But when I saw this roll top desk in a neighbor’s garbage last fall, it called out to me.

I had just finished painting the mandala picnic table, and I thought it would be fun to paint another piece of furniture. I convinced my husband to help me get it home, and realized it was extremely heavy!

I sanded it on one of the last warm days of fall, and then had to bring it inside where it looked like a major eye sore in my dining room all winter.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. A few weeks ago, I gave myself the ultimatum that I either needed to paint it or put it back on the curb.

The shape of the desk seemed like it came from a children’s book. I had been imagining that I wanted to paint quotes from storybooks on it. Then, as I looked at all of the little indentations and cubbies in the desk, it seemed that it would be the perfect place for fairies to hide!

I searched for fairy house SVG files that I could cut on my Silhouette, and I fell in love with the images I found both of the fairies and their houses!

Each image on the table was created by cutting it out of adhesive vinyl, weeding the image, and then using it as a template to paint the image. I posted a video earlier that shows the process of peeling away the vinyl. Many of the images required layers and layers of paint to create each color. It took me about two weeks of intense painting to complete!

This is the first time I purposely painted something to make it look distressed. It was really hard for me to resist the urge to give it a nice, neat, solid coat of paint! I also had planned to sand the words and images to make them look worn. However, my letters naturally came out looking distressed. I normally would have touched them up to make them look more perfect, but decided it was the look I wanted.

You might be wondering if my daughters are too old for fairies, and the answer is “probably.” But this desk is for me. I love looking at all of the little doors and the fairies and thinking about what might be hiding inside the desk.

#fairies #paintedfurniture #DreamItUpCutItOut #silhouette #silhouettecameo #cricutmade #cricut