Painting Wicker

This project has been five months in the making.

Call me Miss Motivation.

Actually, there's another reason: Photography.

Last weekend I bought a Canon Rebel T3 DSLR with my birthday/Christmas money.  I had a Canon Rebel back in the days of film and I loved it.  Then the world went digital, we starting to travel regularly oversees, and the convenience of a point-and-shoot trumped lugging around a camera bag and looking like, gasp, tourists!

So you can look forward to much better pictures in 2012.

Where were we?  Oh, yes...painting wicker. 

I've had this wicker basket since forever.

Seriously, I think it dates back to my tween years, if I'd ever been a tween. 

We didn't have such things as tweens back then.

I've kept it all this time because it's sturdy, compact and holds a lot of junk, like cookbooks and magazines.

But the white was rather juvenile.

I figured I wouldn't have anything to lose if I tried to paint it.  First I painted it with dark brown spray paint, which worked to cover the white but it looked kind of flat.

So I went over it with black craft paint using a chip brush to really work into the weave.

And then I lightly brushed over it with brown craft paint to blend the brown and black together.

To protect the paint, I finished with  a clear acrylic spray.  Here's the original after photo with the old camera.

So dull, dark, and uninspiring.  I just couldn't get a picture that did all my work much justice.  So I shelved the posting until I could get a better picture.  After snapping a million pictures of the spousal unit, the dog, and the cat, I revisited the wicker basket.

Blogging is going to be so much more fun this year with the new camera!