How To Give Your Pig A Fresh Look

THIS POST IS FROM ROOM REMIX - THE BLOG .

You know how much fun it was to type this post title, right? :-)

So here's the scoop. As you may remember, I'm (slowly) trying to incorporate a fresh look into my home. Obviously, like all of you, I can't just clean out the place and start over so I'm trying to reuse and freshen up some things that I already have.

I went through a phase where I really liked these "so ugly they're cute" pigs. I thought they were fun and whimsical. This one has been in my kitchen for a long time, and I'm really completely over it. BUT rather than getting rid of it I wanted to try to give it a new look.  Since I've been wanting to try silver leaf on something, I thought this pig might be just the ticket...

I started out by spray painting the entire pig with oil rubbed bronze spray paint to give it a more uniform finish. (yep. you're right. We can't spray paint outside here in the winter. I spray painted this last fall and am just now getting around to posting it.)

Once that was dry I:

• applied a thin coat of liquid silver adhesive (I bought it and the silver leaf from Michaels)
• let it dry for an hour
• placed silver leaf one piece at a time on the surface of the pig and brushed it into place with a soft brush.  This was probably more challenging because of all the nooks and crannies, but it was actually kind of fun to do.

• After the pig was completely silver leafed, it became blatantly obvious that you couldn't see the detail of the pig when it was sitting on the kitchen cabinet. It was just a bright silver blob. So... I rubbed a very light coat of antiquing glaze on to tame the sheen down a bit and then took a rag and rubbed the silver leaf off slightly on the edges of the ears, arms, eyes, hat, etc. to give it more dimension. Once that was done I took small pieces of silver leaf and just rubbed them on here and there (with my fingers) to add even more dimension (a little like an aged mercury glass look). Totally a trial and error process that I was making up as I went along but it worked out okay.

I love how my bowl turned out! The original pig came with a metal bowl and a brush that was painted red. (I'm not exactly sure why I took them off when I took the before photo this past fall? I guess I was thinking "pig before". literally.) I decided to paint the brush handle black, but wanted to do a completely different bowl. After looking around a bit, I found the perfect white porcelain one at Pier 1.

I was so excited to find something the exact same size! The bowl was perfect, but it was a little plain so I jazzed it up a bit with some vinyl letters sort of randomly placed on the inside of the bowl.

The silver leaf was fun and it would be great to another project sometime. And even though I don't think I would seek out a silver leaf pig for my kitchen at this point, I'm pleased enough with the end result that I'm keeping him and feel like he'll fit in much better!


He was a little hard to photograph because of the reflective quality of the silver leaf, but hopefully you get the idea. And, no, I'm not using this fabric. Even though I love trellis, navy isn't part of my plans. :-)) It's just a fabric sample (with grommets in it that I strategically hid behind the pig). It came to be in the photo because I was tired of fighting the shadows on the wall and put the fabric up to solve that problem.

So there you have it. My solution for giving your pig (or mine) a fresh look. :-)

LINKING TO:
- Show and Share Day at Just A Girl...
- Weekend Wrap-Up at Tatertots and Jello