Mantle Makover - Part One

Are you ready for a transformation?

A mantle transformation, that is.

Okay, I am fibbing.  More like a partial mantle transformation.  Step one of many.

Do you remember me complaining about how incredibly boooring my mantle is?  If you met my mantle at a party, it would discuss the weather.  For an hour.  In detail.  And you'd have to listen because my mantle is the boss's wife and you can't be rude to the boss's wife, right?  And then she'd start to talk about her varicose veins.  And you are all, "No!  I can't see anything!  You look great!"  even though her veins are, like, POPPING OUT and about to EAT YOUR FACE and she keeps making you lean over to look really really close and now you wish she's go back to talking about the weather, because, ARGH, this lady is giving you HIVES and you are going to SHOOT your husband for abandoning you and please someone bring me a vodka.

That is what my mantle is like.

It needs a change, is what I am sayin'.

Look:

(click on pictures to biggify)

Ergh.  Blah.  Annoying.

The first things I wanted to fix were the golden candlesticks.  See how they do nothing for the mantle?  The color is washed out and the symmetry is so tedious.

Here they are about to get some cosmetic surgery.  Begone varicose veins!

BEFORE:

The primer is, er, primed and ready to go! 

So much better already!

Ooo, flat black spray paint, I love you so. 

You are the olive in my martini.

And...

Darn it!

I forgot to take a picture of the candlesticks with their coat of black paint before I distressed them!  Argh!

Anyhoo.  Sorry about that. 

SO - imagine them solid black. 

Can you see them? 

Now picture me sanding just the edges to make some of the primer show through. 

...

Okay, quit imagining.

Because here they are!

AFTER:

(click on pictures to biggify)

See how the slight distressing just "breaks up" the black a bit? 

Don't they look expensive?  I loooooove how they turned out!

I love taking angled pictures.  Sorry if it makes you a little seasick. 

I'm an artist and I WON'T COMPROMISE!

Um, yeah.  Or not.

Anyway.

I think they look a thousand times better!  The deep red of the candles really pop - and I adore my little turquoise birdy!  I think he looks so cute with the candles all clustered around him!

So that was Mantle Makeover, Step One.  Yay!

The next target is the mirror you see in the upper left corner of the above picture.

I love this mirror, it is solid wood, and I spent $80 on it from Pier One years ago... and at a time that I really did not have $80 to spend.  I just fell in love with it and knew I would have it forever.  The raised carvings are all distressed, showing the wood grain underneath.  I think I want to paint it black, like the candlesticks, but I am so nervous about not being happy with the results.  But as it is, it is almost invisble against the builder-white wall color.  So, if I can keep my courage up, I'm 99% certain that it is next in line for the black spray paint! 

Unless you talk me out of it.

(Please talk me out of it.)

Unless you think I should do it.

(Please talk me into it.)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:                AFTER:

(click on pictures to biggify)

See all the parties I linked to here!

I would list their buttons here individually, but there are too many! 

Many thanks to the hostesses for all their time and effort!

You can be sure that, if my post fit their category, I linked to it!