The look of faded grandeur is one of my favourite styles to play around with. And this was, without doubt, one of the most popular pieces I’ve ever created when I first posted it on my Jonathon Marc Mendes Painted Love Facebook Page.
This particular project featured an old Secretaire en portefeuille with a glazed cabinet at the top, a desk area with correspondence slots, drawers beneath and lots of decorative detail around the piece of furniture itself which gave me a wealth of different elements to create that yesteryear look using different painting, aging and finishing techniques.
The main body of the piece was painted using a large Annie Sloan brush in Annie Sloan’s Scandinavian Pink with the internal given a coat of Old Ochre.
If you look inside the glazed top cabinet you’ll see I used Annie Sloan’s Branches stencil to create my own unique pattern.
I used wet distressing, dark and white waxing and a couple of hidden techniques including fly specking which I intend to cover off in a video tutorial if any of you are interested, let me know.
