On the Ombre Train

toot toot!

I'm still not sure how I feel about ombre. It took alot of soul searching to decide whether or not ombre was even something I wanted to try.

One of the fun things about living at my parents house again (almost 10 years after I left the first time), is to come across pieces of my childhood. 

I really liked getting wooden stuff- drawers, shelves, and little things to put my little stuff in. I've come back to this stuff with a new set of eyes. Pieces that have been neglected in a corner can suddenly become an art piece to display in our new house. 

This was the small set of drawers I had my eye on. I always like to decide on project and then sit on it for a few days. I mulled over what I wanted to do. This piece stayed in the living room for almost a week just so I could keep coming back to it, deciding what exactly I wanted to make of it. 
Let's just say that I was into stencils. And bows. And greenery? Glad that's a thing of the past. 

But omitting the paint job, the bones of this piece are great! Solid wood. And can't you see little girl accessories fitting perfectly here?
yes even the inside is blue.

Part of me secretly loves when people paint dressers in ombre. I do think it's a trend that will be a thing of the past so I don't know that I'd ever have the guts to paint a whole dresser.

This was my inspiration (or pinspiration if you will):
I've heard of different ways of finding the perfect shades. In my opinion, in the inspiration picture there isn't enough definition between drawers 2-3 for my liking. I've heard of getting paint mixed all the way down a paint chip (so 4-5 different colors). I've also heard of starting with a dark color and progressively adding white to lighten it.

Since I was covering such a small surface area it seemed silly to get paint mixed at the store. Instead I started with the color of Emberly's old room (which will carry into her new room).

I plopped down 3 globs on my paper plate:
My plan was to make the glob on the left darker and the glob on the right lighter. Then the glob at the top in the middle was just to show me what my original color was. It was going to go:
Bottom: dark (glob on the left)
Next Up: the original pink (glob in the middle)
2nd to Top: light (glob on right)
Top: white
Except when I got all the paint mixed and got 2 of the drawer fronts painted I didn't like it. Just like the inspiration photo there wasn't enough contrast between drawer 2-3 (see the tiny little test patch on drawer 3?).
So back to paint mixing square 1. By the way I mixed RED with the pink to come up with that rosy hue. I liked the dark pink on the bottom so it stayed.

To get drawers 2-3 figured out I painted:
2nd to Top drawer- the original pink (this was on drawer 3 in the original order)
2nd to Bottom drawer- the original pink and added a tiny bit of red. Waaaaay less than I had used for the bottom drawer.

Here you can see the 2 darker pinks- along with the too light pink on the right and the original pink at the top right.
As soon as it was painted I was thrilled! It was exactly what I had envisioned.
As much as I wanted to rush the whole watching paint dry process I knew better. The light pink and white needed 2-3 extra coats than the darker drawers. So once the bottom 2 were dried I put the handles back on. I thought about switching those out too with some crystal pulls, but I decided to keep this project simple and easy. Maybe that's something I'll do down the line.

2-3 days to cure and it was ready for some accessories (small hairbows and headbands). Just to preserve the nostalgia I kept the inside drawers blue. I like remembering what it was in its previous life. It perfectly holds her barrettes and small bows. The other drawers hold her various headbands.

and in typical girl fashion this girl's hairbow collection is only growing!

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