Alchemy Fine Living

Special findings

Deana — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:23:27 +0000

My mom and I just love to search high and low to find interesting treasures to fill our store with. We are crazy about flea markets and estate sales. The Long Beach flea market hosted at Veterans Stadium and the Irvin show hosted at the Great Park are two of our favorites. We never leave either of these places empty handed, in fact, we usually leave with a truck full!

We try to keep a nice blend of old, new, and hand crafted items throughout our little boutique. We carry an eclectic selection of furniture, lighting, glassware, jewelry, baskets, sea shells, and other accessories.

Custom Slipcovers

Deana — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:49:50 +0000

Here at Alchemy fine living, located in Santa Ana California, we offer custom slipcovers. All slipcovers are sewn right here in our shop by my mom Connie and I. Each custom slipcover is tailored to fit your furniture perfectly and made exactly to your specifications. We have created slipcovers for sofas, overstuffed chairs, dining chairs, and ottomans. We can create very simple slipcovers with straight clean lines, or we can create a more casual, loose fitted look with a big ruffly skirt.

Photographed below is one of our most recent projects. This slipcover was made from a cotton polyester blend that had almost a linen like appearance. We added a flange in the seam of each removable cushion. We also added cording detail around the arms, back, and where the very full ruffly skirt attaches. To add a bit of whimsy a big bow was added to the back.

Sofa gets new upholstery. From Trash to Treasure linky party.

Deana — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:41:06 +0000

Welcome to my weekly linky party. I’m so excited to share this weeks transformation with you! This sofa was dropped off for re-upholstery by the sweetest couple about three weeks ago. I had fun searching through our Carole Fabrics sample books and helping them select a fabric. They also sat on several foam samples to select the perfect foam for their new sofa cushions. Here is what the sofa looked like when it arrived at our store.

My mom and I had so much fun working on this sofa. Upholstery is one of those things that is so gratifying. It excites me every time we get a new piece of furniture, oh the possibilities! We both fell in love with the gorgeous yellow fabric that was selected for this sofa, it looks so great on the frame of an otherwise plain piece of furniture. Here is what the sofa looks like now.

Announcement:

Last week I announced a giveaway. Today I will be announcing the winner. Drum roll please…… Congratulations to Michelle at Decor & The Dog!! Michelle, please contact me in a private email with your mailing address and your new pillow will be on the way to your door. Thanks to everyone who participated. You’ll want to check back frequently because I have some other great giveaways planned for future dates.

Party time!!

Furniture feature. Antique highboy dresser.

Deana — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:44:20 +0000

This French Provincial style highboy dresser is the newest addition to our boutique. It’s got such great character and charm. I love the original hardware, and the great antique gold finish that has aged and crackled just perfectly. It is offered at $425.

Mahogany turned black. Furniture painting & distressing.

Deana — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:48:45 +0000

My mom and dad spotted this beauty at the Salvation Army on half price day!! I was super excited when they showed up at our workshop with this desk. It has such great lines, gorgeous detail, and the quality of the craftsmanship is unlike most furniture built today. I knew it would be great painted black, so we got started on it right away.

It was in pretty poor condition so it took a ton of sanding, a little bit of wood fill, some glue, and a couple of finishing nails to tighten up a few spots. I typically prime most pieces of furniture that I paint. Since I was painting this black, and knew that I wanted to distress it after, I decided to skip primmer. The problem with primmer is that it comes in dark grey or white, and I didn’t want to see either of those colors in the distressed areas. I just wanted the deep rich color of the mahogany peeking through.

It took two coats of semi gloss black paint to get good coverage. After the paint was good and dry, a few days latter, I sanded the edges, corners of the drawer faces, and a little bit on the carved detail on the legs. Then I wiped it down with a little bit of Old English oil to really make the richness of the mahogany stand out against the black.

From Trash to Treasure… linky party & giveaway!!

Deana — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:58:20 +0000

Here at Alchemy fine living, located in Santa Ana California, my mom and I offer custom sewing and upholstery services. She and I create custom pillows, bedding, window coverings, slipcovers and so much more. After we complete a sewing or upholstery project we are often left with remnants of fabric. We hoard every piece of scrap fabric that we think is big enough to do something with. As a result we have an excessive amount of fabric piled high in baskets. It’s kinda ridiculous and our obsession with fabric is beginning to take over our workroom.

We recently decided it was time to do something with all that random fabric, so we whipped up a bunch of pillows. Below is a small sampling of some of the pillows we have created. All of them are currently available in our botique and one of them will be given away!

If you would like to win the pillow featured below you can enter my giveaway by either leaving a comment or linking up a post.

Here are the rules for joining the linky party and entering the giveaway:

link up as many posts as you would like
your post must be related to the topic “from trash to treasure” (things you’ve re-purposed or refinished)
you must link a permapost not a link to your homepage
each qualifying post you link will get you an entry into the drawing
if you don’t have a blog leave me a comment and you’ll be entered to win that way

I will select the winner totally at random and announce the winner at next weeks “From Trash to Treasure” blog party. The pillow featured below is the one that I will be giving away. It is 16″ x 16″ and includes a down feather insert. Good luck!!!

Super easy furniture painting technique

Deana — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:15:51 +0000

My mom and I love to paint furniture and we love to experiment with new techniques. The technique that my mom used to paint this little side table is super quick and so easy. I discovered it one day when I didn’t really have any of my proper tools or equipment on hand. I was also in a hurry, for once being impatient paid off, who woulda though? I slapped on a quick, light, and kinda sloppy coat of paint with an old, crusty paint brush. Then I sanded it like crazy. We both loved the way it turned out, so we’ve done many pieces the same way since then, inlcuding this little side table.

This little table really caught my eye. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a triangular table like this. I thought it would be cute painted and distressed, so I couldn’t pass it up.

Here is what it looks like now!

Furniture painting creates farmhouse look

Deana — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:51:41 +0000

I found this dresser, as is the case with many of the pieces I refinish, at the Salvation Army. It is made of solid hardwood, so it weighs a ton, and has dove tail joints on all of the drawers. It’s kind of plain, but very well built.

I decided it needed a fun color to give it some pizazz. Plus I’m kinda gettin bored with the same old, same old. I paint so many pieces of furniture white and every now and then the occasional client will ask me to paint something black, so this wild green color was a fun change of pace.

To achieve this look was quite simple. I scrubbed it with TSP and then sanded it a ton. It had a clear finish on it that was cracking and pealing off. I didn’t try to eliminate that finish entirely, rather I just wanted to remove the loose particles and de-gloss it enough for new paint to adhere. Then I painted it with my spray gun. I applied one quick layer of green paint, let it dry for a day, and then sanded it heavily with 100 grit sandpaper. Since there was only one thin layer of paint and an uneven finish underneath it was easy to expose raw wood. I love the aged patina that was created. I think it looks like it was found in an old farmhouse.

Custom Sewing- vanity cushion

Deana — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:54:30 +0000

I recently had the pleasure of designing and creating a custom cushion for this little vanity chair. It was a bit of a challenge because of the shape of the chair, but it was so much fun to do. I love the gorgeous fabric that was chosen by my client. I picked out a gross grain ribbon that coordinated with the fabric and used it as the ties on all four corners. I love the little bit of whimsy the full bows make at each corner.

Once I finished sewing the cushion I filled it with a down feather insert. It wanted to fold and crease in order to follow the curvature of the chair. Not a good look. (that’s where the challenge came in) How to make this look good?? I’ll add buttons! Then the tufting will make the folds look intentional, give the cushion a bit of style, and add some shape to it. So I created ten covered buttons and got to work. I’ll have to admit I was pretty excited when I finished it and even more excited when my client came to pick it up. She loved it, which totally made my day.

From Trash to Treasure- weekly linky party

Deana — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:26:53 +0000

This oak table was in really bad condition. The top was beat up! I’m not really into refinishing furniture, instead I love to embrace it’s flaws or disguise them in clever ways (so much easier than the pain staking work involved in restoring abused wood to it’s previously beautiful state). This table was painted, distressed, stained, and then the top was covered in pages from an antique hymn book.

I often forget to take before pictures; I get so caught up in the excitement! Here is what the table looked like after a coat of primer.

This table got two coats of primer and two coats of Swiss Coffee in a satin finish. After all that paint dried a little bit of bleeding was still showing through, no worries though, the stain I had planned to add latter would definitely hide that. I used a 10o grit sandpaper to sand all of the edges of this table. Then I rubbed Watco Danish Oil in a dark walnut finish all over it. I used a small paint brush to push the stain into some of the recessed areas. I left it on pretty thick, so it took several days to dry.

The final step was to cover the top in old pages from a book of hymns. My mom whipped up a concoction of regular old wood glue and water, about equal parts, and used that to hold the old pages down. She spread a thin layer of the watered down glue on the table top, laid down pages one at a time, and then applied another thin layer on top of the pages.

Here is what the table looks like now. I think we’ll add a piece of glass to it just to protect the top, but I love the way it looks!