There will be tables and chairs, pony rides and dancing bears

The project I'm talking about is quite different from my usual posts, but I thought it was too cool not to share! My boyfriend and have been living in our second (and awesome) appartment for a while now, and we're slowly transforming it into our ideal cozy nest. This basically means surrounding ourselves with prints, books, toys and beautiful things we love. Recently, my boyfriend's cousin told us we could have the matching armchair for our two-seat couch (which used to be hers as well and makes an appearance here). We are planning a little reading nook in one corner of the living room, and wanted a little table to keep books and cups of tea. Enter this one!

The cat wasn't included, but he has confiscated the cardboard...

This is a super basic little table from a surprisingly cheap Swedish designer. It's pretty dull in itself but I picked it because the basic shape was nice and it was untreated wood. This meant it would be easy to paint!

I traced the shapes of the two tabletops (it has a smaller, lower level) onto a big sheet of paper and started sketching. I wanted something floral, in two colours and with a bit of flair. I found a lot of inspiration in a book about haute couture details, especially from the embroidery! A cat's critical eye is essential during this step. (just a disclaimer: I don't intend this as a tutorial, since I'm probably doing loads of things wrong. I just thought it would be nice to show the process instead of just the finished product!)

These were the finished sketches. I wanted it to look complicated, but still doable to paint. After all, I hadn't painted in ages!

I then used yellow tracing paper to copy the drawings onto the wood surface. Yellow was a good choice: it's light enough so it doesn't show through the paint, but it's more visible than white.

Time to get painting! I started with the lighter colour, a metallic gold acrylic paint. This way I could easily fix mistakes later by covering them with the darker colour. These steps took quite some time because I had to use tiny brushes and needed two coats to get enough coverage.

After the gold I spent two days painting all the rest a dark teal. It was really fiddly sometimes and I was unsure about how it would look for a bit (in hindsight I should have sanded the wood down a bit first but shhh...). It's really hard to make acrylic paints look even and opaque when you're doing all these small details! Thankfully my boyfriend said he likes it more when it's a bit blotchy. D'awww!

And here's the finished table! I love how it turned out, and I can't wait to give it a proper place in our reading corner!

Ps: if you are curious about the post title...