Loving Annie Sloan Chalk Paint's Emperor Silk!

Red on this camper is ASCP Emperor's Silk (five colors used altogether) - link to image and source

Having recently returned from China (see my "postcards from China series - here is one - link to posting), I must still be under that country's magical influence. I purchased Annie Sloan Chalk Paint (ASCP) (link to website) most "Chinese" color - Emperor's Silk. It is a rich red and a joy to work with - I have almost completed four projects and am looking around for more!

For those keeping track, I have now been using ASCP for two years - mostly on my refurbished upholstered furniture sold through eBay and Etsy (my website, unfortunately, needs to be "killed"since I can no longer update it and it is woe-fully out-of-date). I am probably close to a hundred projects and have used the following colors:

Old White (I'm on my third can)

Old Ochre (second can)

Graphite (third can)

Duck Egg Blue (my favorite until now)

Paris Grey (least favorite)

Chateau Grey (like a grey-green)

Cream

CoCo

Emperor's Silk (new favorite)

The paint does go on very smoothly and I continue to fine-tune lessons learned including:

• Start with a good cleaning of the wood to eliminate dust and oils (I used Goof-Off - link to website - it's heavy-duty and you do need heavy gloves but it works.
• If there are gaps or gouges in the wood, fill them before painting - the paint will not hide them and will actually highlight them.
• Do your first coat starting with the piece upside down - I am always amazed at how much I miss if I don't do this. 
• Dilute the paint with a small amount of water if it gets too heavy or doesn't glide easily over the surface.
• Use a toothbrush or other stiff applicator when applying wax into crevices - I am told the ASCP brushes work well for this but haven't made that purchase and do like the ability to just throw away these old toothbrushes when done - clean-up of wax is much tougher than clean-up of paint  which is easily done by rinsing under water.

Here are some photos from my ASCP pinterest board to further inspire - I love them - see sources and original postings by linking to source above.

Nice combo of paint and wood-tone treatments. 

This is demonstration using dark wax directly over the paint instead of intermediate clear wax - much darker look. 

Chest using both clear and dark wax. 

Very ambitious! 

This piece was first done with graphite (grey-black) and a second coat of Emperor's Silk added.

Here are my projects!

After "finishing" this set of benches, I did end up taking a very small brush to better hit the crevices/details on the legs - these were hard to penetrate. 

Loved how the horse turned out - will be using as part of my holiday decorations - probably with some bears on its back!

Postcards from China - Yangtze River

Bridges over the Yangtze River. For about the last 10 years, China has been engaged in massive infrastructure building  and most of these were rather new.

As part of our Imperial Jewels of China trip, my husband and I traveled on the Yangtze River on a "longboat" - The Viking Century Emerald. The trip started in Wuhan and five days later we departed the ship in Chongquig.  The Yangtze is the third largest river in the world and 34% of China's population lives long the river.

Over boat, The Viking Century Emerald, carried 260 passengers. 

We saw a lot of river traffic but almost all of it was commercial and most of what we saw were barges of various sizes.

The scenery along the way, particularly after we had passed the huge Three Dam Gorge (largest hydroelectric plant in the world) was stunning. We were told that over 4000 small villages had been flooded when the dam opened in 2009.

Ancient structures juxtaposed new construction throughout the area - we were amazed at the number of high-rise buildings throughout our journey. We were told that rural folks were the new inhabitants of these huge structures but many looked incomplete and empty.

This was a truly amazing trip and I hope these photos begin to describe it!

Postcards from China - Shanghai

My husband and I just returned from a Viking River Cruise (Imperial Jewels of China) and found it to be a fascinating country. It was actually a combination land/river trip and we stayed two nights in Shanghai. We were only able to see a few things and definitely wish we had been able to extend this portion of the trip.

Here in postcard format, were some of the highlights!

The River Bund is associated with "colonial" Shanghai when European countries constructed buildings that reminded them of home. It is a lovely, broad river with both commercial and tourist traffic. 

While this was interesting, we felt it was as much an opportunity to try to sell these fine rugs (at not insignificant prices) as an educational experience. The food was good! 

This was our favorite stop - a beautiful garden in the heart of Old Shanghai with lovely walkways and fine examples of Chinese garden features. It was still early in the day and the sky was mostly clear and blue which turned out to be unusual in China -  we did not see many blue skies. 

This is a a lovely museum and nicely laid out!

We were still shell-shocked (14 and a half hours of flying through Chicago - earlier delayed flight from Atlanta) so were probably not as appreciative of this fine city as we could have been. We found it to be bustling with big traffic jams and lots of construction. This turned out to be true throughout China, at least in the moderate to big cities we visited.