I recently finished a very fun little milk paint furniture makeover. I have had two storage cubes in our garage for about 5 years that I’ve been meaning to remake into something else. We even moved them from California to Colorado!  They are Pottery Barn Tristan storage cubes, so the quality is excellent, which is why I had a really hard time giving them away before moving.  However, the wear and tear they received from when our children were young left them in need of some serious TLC.

Before

Here is a picture of one of the storage cubes – I had already removed the chunky feet these cubes came with by this point.  

pottery barn tristan cube makeover

This particular storage cube was whispering to me that it wanted to be turquoise and have a stencil applied to it.  So, I thought I would give milk paint another try (you can read about my previous milk paint fiasco and eventual recovery here, here, and here).

Paint

I chose to use Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint Eulalie’s Sky 1qt that I bought from Amazon.com. I love their quick Prime delivery, because I admit I am very impatient when I want to start a new project, and I don’t like to have to wait for supplies to arrive. Here is a picture of the milk paint. If you are not familiar with milk paint, you have to mix it with water to make the paint.

Eulalie’s Sky is a really beautiful light turquoise, and I fell in love with it when I saw images of other furniture makeovers using this color. My second experience with milk paint went much much smoother than the first.  I lightly distressed the piece after painting, and hand painted the stencil (read down further for more info on how I did that).

After

Here is the result of my storage cube makeover!

eulalie's sky miss mustard seed makeover

turquoise storage chest for bedroom

turquoise milk paint storage cube

Isn’t is lovely? I just love furniture makeovers, and I’m really happy with how this one turned out. I think it would look super cute in a girl’s bedroom for storage, or in a guest room, as in a nursery as a blanket storage chest…so many possibilities.  I’m going to be selling this particular storage cube in my shop for Colorado residents only…because I really don’t think I can figure out a way to ship this puppy economically across the country.

Stenciling

For the stenciling, I once again turned to my favorite little sidekick – Saral Transfer Paper! This stuff is the best purchase I have ever made for creating lettered wood signs, or for transferring images, or for stenciling on furniture. At this point, I can’t live without it. You can reuse the paper again and again, so it lasts forever, and it wipes away easily so you never see the trace once you are finished. Amazing stuff!

I bought a nice stencil from Michael’s, put the transfer paper underneath the stencil, and taped it in place on top of the storage cube. I traced the stencil with a ball-point pen, which transferred the image to the cube.

saral transfer paper for furniture stencil

And here is the transferred pattern you see once you take away the paper and stencil. Nice clean guide lines for painting!

transfer paper for furniture stencil

Next, I hand painted in the lines (mostly) using some acrylic paint and a small paint brush. Don’t try to make it perfect…you’ll drive yourself crazy!

hand painted stencil for furniture

And that’s it!  This was a really fast, easy project.  I think I’m starting to like milk paint!  The second storage cube is asking to be masculine and a little industrial.  I’ll post about that little furniture makeover soon. 🙂  Have a great weekend everyone!

See this and other great projects at the following link parties:

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.com, which means that if you click on the links to the products and buy the product, I will receive a small commission on the sale.  Just want to be open and honest with ya’ll. Please know I would never recommend a product that I don’t love and use myself!