amber eames

I found this little counter stool on the neighbor’s curb. There’s nothing wrong with it and I kind of wish people wouldn’t just throw out perfectly good stuff, but hey.. thanks!

1StoolBefore It’s perfectly fine on it’s own, but I figured it could use some pizzazz so I gave it a makeover.

I fell in love with some fabric I found at a thrift store a few years ago but couldn’t figure out what to do with it.

Fabric It’s navy blue (the picture doesn’t do the colour justice) with a cute print of a little person painting. I only needed to use a bit of it for this project but I’m finally glad to just be using it at all. I realized that I have some spray paint that matches two of the colours in the print, so it seemed perfect.

I didn’t stop to take pictures of the entire process because I like to just get things done, but it was relatively simple.

2StoolPainted I unscrewed the seat and removed it from the base. I painted the base Rustoleum’s Seaside (GREAT colour!)

I lightly sanded over the top and sides of the seat and painted the bottom and sides of it Krylon Watermelon. I didn’t bother painting the top because I was going to glue fabric to it anyway.

Then I very-carefully-at-the-perfect-angle traced the size of the seat onto some newsprint. It took me 3 tries to get it right.

I traced the pattern onto the fabric and cut it out in as perfect a circle as I could manage. After the paint was dry, I screwed the seat back onto the stool and Mod Podged the fabric onto the seat top.

Lining up circles with a piece of stretchy fabric sure was fun.

After that dried for about 15 minutes, I painted the Mod Podge over the top of the fabric and let that dry another 15.

5StoolAfter

The lighting in my house makes it seem like the colours don’t match, so I took it outside to get better shots in natural light. Then I realized it looks different almost every time. Take my word for it, though. It matches.

This was an accidental shot but it’s kind of neat if you’re into extreme close-ups.

7StoolAfterOutsideWM 8StoolAfterOutsideCloseUpWM The whole project only took about an hour. Now we get to see how well the adhered fabric stays on there and if I’ll need to add more Mod Podge.