Cherry Painted Lazy Susan

Awhile ago, I found two lazy Susans at the thrift store.  I bought both of them.  No, I am not a hoarder.  Although, I can't promise I won't buy another lazy Susan if I see one.  You may remember, the first one I painted to look like a French wine barrel lid.  I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with the second one.  Until recently.

Do you all remember Polly's fabulous table that she painted with this same sort of design?  You can see her Make Mine Beautiful painted table design post.  The colors were absolutely perfect for my kitchen!   She has her round table painted green/yellow/black with red cherries, of course.   Although, perfect, I was thinking I needed to branch out of green/yellow/red in my kitchen (yes, because who needs perfect?).  Then, I was flipping through an old magazine and found ideal inspiration. 

You can see the magazine photo at the bottom right, my Cheap Chic Home printed over Kate Spade--I believe it's an ad for her dishes.  It's a plaid tablecloth spread out on grass for a picnic, with her pale blue dishes holding cherries.  Here is a quick how-to of how I accomplished my new cherry lazy Susan from my inspiration blog and photo.

• I started with my plain one, then taped it off to roughly thirds.  The top and bottom got painted buttermilk white and the middle a turquoise.  I mixed the turquoise with the buttermilk white, because it was too bright.  
• Then, you can see in the bottom left, I used tape to tape off where I wanted my plaid to begin.  I basically had no idea what I was doing.  I painted gold horizontally, then mixed my white with the gold to get it light and painted vertical stripes.  After those were done, I used buttermilk white with just a bit of gold and painted in the lightest squares. 
• I used a rubber stamp set for the "Fresh Fruit" painted with burnt umber paint
• then used a stencil for "Cherries."  It got a bit off-center even though I traced them out on newspaper first--go figure.
• For the cherries, I used the rim of a juice cup and traced the cherries in a cluster.  To get the design, I looked at Polly's.  Hey--thanks, Polly!  The painting itself was "free hand".  I only had bright red and the burnt umber so I worked with those two.  For the leaves and stems I mixed a couple of greens, then added the white for the reflection at the end.
• Let it dry for a couple of hours--that's the hard part!
• Sanded it a bit
• Added umber glaze

I am ridiculously pleased with how it turned out!  I am so not a painter, so any time I try something like this it seems to look worse before it gets better, if it gets better!

I think it goes great with my tomato and butternut pottery.  This is one of those projects that is very forgiving--the tape bleed, have pencil lines?  No problem, take a fine brush and paint over the bad spots, I didn't even try to match the paint colors from my blending and it all worked, if I can do it, you can, too!

Hanging out here: