Road Side Chair Turns in to a Princess Chair With Plaster Stencils

Victoria Larsen Stencils
by Victoria Larsen Stencils
3 Materials
It laid on the road for 3 days before I decided to rescue it; this plain chair frame. It was solid wood and the old varnish had worn away years ago. But it needed new life and was too good to just have been dumped.
It sat in my garage for two years, waiting for me to find something sweet to do with it. I'd seen many posts on Hometalk where people had taken old chairs and turned them in to planters for the garden. Cute idea, but I wanted to give this chair a bit of whimsy and elegance instead. It got a good dose of sanding and primer to start the project.
I decided to add a raised design to the chair back rails and the seat frame. I used tile grout instead of joint compound to create the raised design because it dries rock hard and won't chip off. Simply scrape the grout over the stencil openings.
Gently peel the stencil back to reveal the new design and let it dry overnight.
Since my "find" was just a frame of the chair, I needed to create a new seat. I measured and cut one out of heavy plywood.
This seat needed something special. I rummaged through my material box and found a great piece of silver satin. Using one of my stencils, I added a random wallpaper design on the satin with metallic gold fabric paint.


I then added 2" thick foam rubber to the new wood seat and covered it using my handy electric stapler.
There were screw holes in the front legs and luckily, I had little resin appliques that I glued over the upper holes and then simply glued a pearl button over the lower two holes.


I painted the entire chair (including the resin appliques and raised stencil design) with gray paint. Once dry, I used brown wax to add shadow to the edges and joints. I then painted all the raised areas with gold metallic paint to match the cute little seat. Gold, fabric cord glued to the seat bottom edge finished the project.
Now it's the perfect Princess Chair for a little girl's room!
Suggested materials:
  • Raised Plaster Stencil   (http://www.victorialarsen.com)
  • Pre-mixed Tile Grout   (Home Depot)
  • Resin Appliques   (http://www.ebay.com)
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  • D. D. on Sep 10, 2016
    This is an absolutely beautiful chair. You are truly inspired and wonderfully creative. May God bless you and yours. Thank - You, Dee
  • IFortuna IFortuna on Sep 23, 2016
    Gorgeous! What a great idea. I like the stencils on the seat a lot and the idea of using the grout gives me an idea to fix an old gold frame that had a piece knocked off during a move.========I really love enamel "airplane paint", you know the kind that comes in those tiny little bottles. The gold really glows. Thanks : )
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