Painting a Hand Carved Wooden Jewelry Box in Farmhouse White

8 Materials
$40
2 Hours
Easy

I love carved wood pieces. The intricate detailing that someone has put into the piece amazes me. Most of the time though the older pieces need a fresh new color. Let's see how this one was updated.


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Before - pretty carved but unflattering color


This hand carved jewelry chest has great details but such an unflattering inconsistent wood stain. It is time to add some color and make it pretty.

scrub well step 1


Step one is to scrub the chest well with simply green cleaner, warm water and a scrub brush. See how the orangy red stain washes off in the rinse water? To make sure this doesn't happen after being painted the entire piece was sprayed with Zinsser shellac to seal in the original stain once the piece was dry.

add new feet


The carved chest was missing a foot when I purchased it so I bought 4 new feet. I cut a chopstick to make the dowel and glued them on with titebond glue.

painting process


Once the shellac was dry it was time to paint. I chose palace white from Jolie Paint. Two coats were brushed on. The carved areas were not painted by keeping the brush more flat to the surface allowing it to skim over.

Farmhouse white carved jewelry chest


Then to seal it all up, Joilie clear wax was brushed on using their great wax brush. To bring out the carvings more, Jolie's dark wax was added as the final step and it is complete.


The complete details can be found in the tutorial link below and you can see more one of a kind  jewelry box tutorials HERE.

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  • Jacx Jacx on Mar 22, 2020

    I it's the wood. It's not as soft as balsa but it is a softer wood that holds a sharp edge when carved. They are always that reddish color but w a light vein, now and again. I've seen a few large screen panels but the pieces are usually small. All done w hand tools and a hand run drill. I've seen pictures from the 60s of things being carved. Tells you my age! This stuff was super popular in the flower child era!

    • Creative Moments Creative Moments on Mar 22, 2020

      thank you so much for that information, I love learning about it and will add that to my tutorial on my blog post :)


  • Jacx Jacx on Mar 22, 2020

    They also used inlay mother of pearl into the wood, amazing really, especially when it was all done by hand. Amazing craftmanship. Google the inlay, beautiful work. Also they put tiny fine brass wire hammered into the wood, you must put a tiny trench in first, then hammer.

    I'm a front of trivia! Avid reader, teacher, busybody! Lol.

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