Blue is my favourite colour but it doesn't show up much in my clothing or interior design choices. I bought an antique dresser that had a thick coat of cracking white paint, and I decided to have some fun with it by painting it bright blue. Most of our furniture is wood/dark wood stained so I am definitely in need of something else, too matchy matchy doesn't look good.
I had a tiny pot of absolutely delicious looking ultramarine blue linseed oil paint that I bought without having an idea of what I needed it for. When I bought the dresser I immediately went for the blue thinking it would be absolutely perfect for it.
It took me a few days to get off all the old paint and varnish, and sand it down. There was a bit of white left in the crevices of the decorative elements but I could not be bothered to get it all off it'll be fine.
I only had 2dl of the blue paint and that was just about enough for one coat, I knew I had to buy more but I went ahead and did the first layer right away because it would take several days to dry anyways. It's extremely hard to capture the true shades of the bright blues, but I hope you can see how red based ultramarine is on the picture below. I chose to paint the inside of the drawers white because I want to store clothes in here and the white would make it easier to see what's inside.
The paint looked more true blue in the pot but I'm sure the red pine underneath also adds to the warmth of it. Anyways, I had a decision to make, buy more ultramarine, or mix a different blue. I do not like purple at all, so I decided I'm gonna mix a more cool toned blue myself in the hopes of getting the perfect blue for me.
Linseed oil paint is basically just boiled linseed oil and pigment, maybe some chalk and drying medium, so it's fairly easy and cheaper to make yourself. I ordered a couple blue pigments, ultramarine and phthalo, a phthalo green, along with some others for different projects. Ultramarine pigment is so saturated that the camera's histogram shows an error on the highlight in that blue, it's insane and a picture does not do any justice to it.
I kept mixing the blues, and a hint of green, with the linseed oil, making a paste and then adding more oil. It took me a really long time because you have to break the clumps of pigment with a spatula and really work it to make it all even. These synthetic blues stain like a motherfucker, so I had to clean up immediately if I spilled even just some of the pigment of the table. I swear next time I'll put down some brown paper before I make a mess. I don't do measuring and I eyeballed everything adding this and that until I was satisfied, I used about 1dl of ultramarine, 0.75dl of phthalon blue and a teaspoon of green, to 3,5dl of oil. Hindsight, I think I could have used way less pigment, and just added chalk to make the paint a nice consistency, will try that another time. In the end I poured the paint though a gauge to make sure there are no clumps in the final paint.
Here's a reminder of what the dresser looked like when I bought it:
And here's the end result after two layers of my own paint:
The gloss is uneven because the oil has soaked in more in some spots, but it should end up evenly matt in the end. I will have to monitor it and see if I need to oil it or something like that if it seems like the blue pigment comes off if touched. Blue is a hard colour to work with and mixing linseed oil paint myself for the first time might not yield perfect results immediately.
I am very very happy with the colour and this was such a fun project to do. The pictures do absolutely no justice to how regal the blue is, but we'll just have to live with it.
What colour would you have chosen for the dresser?
Ps. My next project is the old green floor you see in the pictures.
