Click to enlargeIt's been a while, but I am still playing with dolls. Not as much as I could without a pesky day job, and evening job, but I still found time to repaint a piece of furniture to satisfy both myself, and my Silkstone Barbie.
I like the basic style of a lot of Barbie furniture, but I'm not nine years old anymore, and those colors can turn your stomach after looking at them for too long, and in too large a quantity. Is it a coincidence that classic Barbie pink is the same color as Pepto Bismol? I don't think so.
I snagged a nice little curio cabinet/hutch off of good old eBay for a few bucks, but again, it was still so very, very cutesy wutesy pink. So it sat hidden on a bookshelf for several months while I researched how to repaint it, and then found time and energy to actually do it.
It turns out to be very easy, and reasonably inexpensive, to give plastic furniture a quick makeover. The key is getting the right paint, and Krylon Short Cuts fits the bill. They sell little bottles of the stuff for touchups that are the perfect dose to transform juvenile pink to more practical black.
I picked up a bottle of black Krylon, a set of cheap paintbrushes, and finally sat down to work on it last night. In just a few hours the entire piece was repainted and dried, and looked completely different. On a side note, even if it's cold outside, it is definitely worth opening a window and getting a fan going to circulate those fumes.
I did one coat on the back, the top, bottom, and sides, and let it dry. Then I returned for the more time consuming, detail oriented interior and doors. Because I had several brushes to work with I could pick one to get into and around the edges of the mirror in the top section. I tried to apply masking tape to the mirrors, but it was such a pain I decided 'the hell with it' and let the paint fall where it may. I got a little bit of paint on the edge of the mirrors, but if anyone actually looks that closely they can kiss my copius behind. With the doors closed you can't tell.
Click to enlargeAfter the first coats dried, there were defintely spots requiring a touchup, so I went back one last time and made sure any speck of pink I could see got covered. The front doors, top, and sides got a full second coat just to even it all out. I also painted the very edges of the "clear" windows, because that was the only way to cover the pink. It actually turned out pretty cool, in my humble opinion.
So for $3 for the furniture piece, $3 for the Krylon paint (which still has about 1/3 of the bottle left), $3 for a set of paint brushes I can use again (or toss, since I didn't spring for the right brush cleaner with Krylon paint, but still got them clean with soap and water), and an hour of active paint time, I have a jet black cabinet for my doll display (assuming I ever get around to making a spot for it, let alone setting it up properly) that looks like it belongs in an adult's home.
Now if I just had more time to play with my dolls...
