Vintage Seed Packet Art

A great way to not only refresh a couple of old stools, but create works of art depicting vintage seed packet art!  This post covers basic instructions on how to make your own vintage works of art!

vintage seed packet art stools

A few weeks ago, my daughter and I went yard sale shopping together.  We were mainly out to find some furniture for her new apartment and managed to find a nice couch for $25.  I personally do not need furniture.  With the last child out of the house, we are in fact downsizing.

But that certainly didn’t stop me from picking up two bar stools.  With the price of $5 each, I simply could not afford to pass them up.  Especially when they had so much potential!

I have lately been fascinated with vintage seed packets.  They have such a wonderful look! And it is the time of year to start planting, so it seemed appropriate to do something vintage and colorful to these two lonely little barstools.

I began by cleaning all of the filth off of them and painting them both with several layers of white semi gloss paint.  Since we already had some white paint leftover from painting baseboards in the house, this just seemed meant to be.

I then did a google search for vintage seed packettes and printed a few of them off.  I narrowed it down to peas, corn, beets and peppers.  All chosen for their colors.  And since I only had two bar stools, my mother helped me narrow it down again to Peas and Peppers.

I sketched out the design on to the top of the stool, and using acrylic paints, began to fill in the colors.  The easiest way to go about this is to start in the back ground and work your way to those items that are in the foreground of the picture.

 I began by using an antique white around the edges of the picture.  And then started filling in color in the back ground leaves.

vintage seed packet art stools

Unfortunately, I did not take a bunch of pictures in between the start and finish of the paintings because when you are working with acrylic, you have to work fast to get a good blend as it dries quickly.

vintage seed packet art stools

This is the completed pea stool.  I added the name of the seed company to the bottom to give it a nice vintage look.
vintage seed packet art stools

And here is the completed pepper stool.  On both stools, I added a contrasting color to the rungs.  Red for the peppers and green for the peas.
vintage seed packet art stools

 

I love how they came out.  Now I just need to find a use for them.  The hubby is giving me a hard time because we don’t have a bar.  I guess I could take up drinking.  But frankly, its just one of those projects that I felt compelled to do.  So, my lonely little stools are still lonely, but at least they are well loved…

If you enjoyed this tutorial, you might enjoy my Faux Wood Inlay Tutorial.  In this post, I take an old sewing table and turn it into a fancy looking wood inlay piece.  But you won’t believe how easy it is!

Also, check out my Faux Tiffany Lamp Tutorial where I take a thrift store lamp and make it into Tiffany.  With elmers glue.  Really!

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