Old school paint has new fans

Everything from garage sale finds to family heirlooms can be upcycled, repurposed, refreshed or refinished with a little imagination, a little time, and a little do-it-yourself miracle worker known as chalk-based paint.

Chalk-based paint (not to be confused with chalkboard paint, which creates a surface that can be written on with chalk) offers an easy way to refresh old furniture or to create the popular “shabby chic” look of distressed wood without having to prep the piece by sanding and priming the surface.

“I have very little furniture-painting experience. Everything I have painted has not turned out …. So, I thought, ‘I’m going to come and learn to do it properly before I tackle another big piece,” says Darlene Davis.

Camille Richardson agrees, saying, “I just wanted to have somebody beside me going, ‘Why don’t you do this, why don’t you add that’ …. I wanted some expertise.”

Davis and Richardson are among six women who participated in a chalk-based-paint class taught in April by Sharon Cowell, owner of Reinvented Vintage in Little Rock. See tomorrow’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more about this popular paint.

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