Or “I’m Too Cheap Frugal For the Real Deal”

I’ve been wanting to try chalk paint for quite some time now, but I just couldn’t justify the cost of Annie Sloan. It’s nothing personal Ms. Sloan.  We live on one income and have teenagers.  With an eensie weensie teeny tiny budget like mine, it is imperative to find alternatives to the “real deal.”

I’ve seen several homemade recipes on pinterest for chalk paint.  When I finally found a pin that featured four recipes, I just had to check it out.  Denise at Salvaged Inspirations put all four to the test.  Since she has worked with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint before, I trusted her judgement.  Her results and the recipes can be found here.

I used the No. 2 recipe to paint these dining room chairs.  It only took 2 coats of paint and I didn’t even have to use primer!

I wanted to age them and bring out the design on the chair back, but all I had on hand was plain paste wax.  So, I did the sensible thing and went to Pinterest.  My search wasn’t resulting in a DIY of tinting plain paste wax.  So I went to Google. I ❤ Google.

I found what I was looking for at Saving  4 Six.  Carrie took on the experiment of tinting paste wax for a project.  The DIY tutorial can be found here.

After Sanding the “aged” areas and applying the tinted paste wax the chair looked like this:

I apologize for the poor picture quality.  We’ve been having a lot of summer rain lately and the garage lighting is awful.

Here is a  quick roundup of the chalk paint and tinted paste wax:

Because I do not want to take credit for the work of others, please refer to the instructions on the links above.

What you need to make chalk paint:

3 Parts Latex Paint

1 Part Plaster of Paris

A little bit of water for mixing

What you need to tint plain paste wax:

Paste Wax

Oil based stain

What adventures have you had in DIYing your own version of an expensive product?