Hi We are Helen and Cas

from the Best of British Boutique and we have decided to start a blog on what we do, have some fun, gossip about whats trending and we will also answer topic related questions .

So its our first week of doing this and we each have two topics,

Helen  is upcycling a customers tired piece of vintage carved furniture and Cas is working on a piece of reclamation from a french church bought at a car boat sale crumbling and crying out to be re loved.

so today we started with coffee and a chat about whats going on in the world of interior trends and crafty endevours.

we had a good look at a couple of sites on instagram  #styleitdark and #jay_n_co we love these sites style it dark was showing a beautiful vintage style emerald green lamp and jay was promoting the repair workshop, worth taking a look.

so on with what we got up to Helen

was upcycling a piece of tired vintage furniture for a client this started its life as a dark oak piece and the clients brief was to make it look dramatic and stone like the client chose this Aubbuson Blue chalk paint by Annie Sloane.

to start with rub the furniture down with a medium emery paper to key the surface if the surface has no previous paint or varnish paint with a light primer. Helen applies the Aubbuson blue and lets it dry once dry a  aged finished is applied with a dry brush technique dabbing off the excess with a cloth. Old white (Annie Sloane paint was used for this)

To finish the look a vintage feel was given Helen used  Stardust  ( Everlong ) again using the dry brush technique concentrating on the carved accents of the piece.

currently Helen is still working on this for the client and we hope to reveal the full piece in the near future.

I have been working on a very different piece. this is my own project brought from a car boot sale and has been sitting in my workshop waiting to be started,

So todays the day, this beautiful piece once sat in a french church and over the years has been left to crumble, I wanted to hang it in my home as a piece of art but before doing that I need to strengthen it as with every move it is crumbling and falling apart. So today I'm is using a fibre glass kit to help hold

the piece together.

The first thing was to clean the area to be strengthen and if you attempt to do a similar project she would advise to do it outside  and use gloves and a mask as its very toxic and smelly.

next step was to cut the fibre glass to shape mix the resin as the instructions I used a Isopon Kit brought from Halfords.

I started to apply it, directly to the cleaned surface of the back of the sculpture which is made from plaster.

This a long messy and smelly job the back of the piece has already set and is now rigid it takes 24hrs to dry in total. A lot of work is still needed but the major part is done.

written by Cas 28.08.18

if you have any questions about this Blog please contact us at BestofBritish 2015@gmail.com

press enquires welcome.

We will post the Answers on next weeks Blog

Bye for now! keep crafting x