Rub n Buff

At the behest of many of you, I decided to move forward and add more detail to the ottoman.  Not having an upholstery hammer or spacing guide on hand, and encountering the problem of very hard wood to secure the nail head into, I tackled the gold trim first on the theory that perhaps it would be enough bling, and I could avoid the nail head altogether (though I think this is proving untrue--tell me what you think.)  Also, is nail head one word or two?  Blogger's spell check is going crazy when I try to make it one.

To add a little bit of gold, I picked up a $3 tube of rub n buff at Michaels.  There was grecian gold, gold leaf, and antique gold, with no indication of what the difference between them might be.  I guessed and went antique.  Lots of bloggers use this product, and my aunt Eileen, who is a guru in such matters, recommended it to me, and warned me that a little goes a long way.

For some reason, I thought I could just freehand it.  The edges of the ottoman have these grooves routed out, and it seemed easy enough to paint within the lines, but I quickly discovered this was not true.  Do you ever do something stupid and think to yourself how stupid it is as you do it, but figure out it all works out in the end as long as you don't fall/hurt yourself/break anything/ruin anything?  I did not practice with the rub n buff before applying it directly to the ottoman, and even though it was clear with the very first brush stroke that this was not going to work itself out, I continued to paint the whole line.

A fine mess.

So out came the painters tape.

(This is when it feels like an octagon has more than eight sides.  They just kept coming!)

Things worked out much more even, all around.

It feels a tiny bit bright to me (though doesn't really appear too bright in the pictures), but I'm going to sit with it for a few days before I do anything more to it.  And then I will break down and tackle the nail head.  Probably.