Rustic with a Touch o' Whimsy~ Antique Dresser Makeover

I have been busy the last week taking advantage of the nice weather to finish some projects. With the nice weather officially gone, now I will have time to show some of them to you. This dresser is another one of my auction finds. She is solid oak with lovely serpentine front drawers. Here is the before~

My original plan for this piece was to paint her turquoise and use some lovely twig shaped handles on the larger drawers and some sweet rosebuds on the top. Things rarely go as planned once I start a transformation. Does that happen with anyone else? I did paint with this wonderful $5 turquoise oops paint.

Oops paint is the custom colored paint they mix for someone that doesn't come out just right. My local Lowes and Home Depot price their gallons at $5 each. Do you know that feeling you get when you drive by a great thrift shop or yard sale and you just have to stop? Well I am starting to feel that same way when I drive by hardware stores. I just have to pop in and see what color paint they have messed up today! I have accumulated quite a collection.

It is a dangerous situation for me to have so many options on hand! Enter problem number one, my sweet twig handles are 1/8 of and inch to small for the original holes. Now y'all (contraction for  you all) know how I feel about hole filling right? I had to change my original plan to match the hardware that would fit, which was a bit more on the rustic side. Here is the hardware I used, this was after giving it a copper glaze.

To take the dresser from botanical/beachy to rustic I decided to dry brush with some cranberry paint I had on hand due to my oops paint addiction. Here is the cranberry right after I brushed it on, which is the last picture I took of the process.

Then I sanded to feather it in a bit. I also distressed the edges with my sanding block. I was pretty satisfied with the look at this point, so sorry no pics to share. Later in the evening close to midnight I was in the garage laying out the new hardware to get an idea of the finished look. At this point, I decided the colors were too dark. So I dry brushed  on some yellow, much better but still missing something. I ended up heavily glazing the entire piece with copper glaze. It turned out so great, the metallic glint just set it off. I also painted the drawer insides yellow (oops paint again) and lined them with this beautiful red toile fabric that a friend of mine picked up for me at a thrift store a while back. I also have a bit of a fabric addiction, so many confessions in one post! Here are the drawers~

Don't you just love these fun colorful knobs, did I mention that I am a bit of a sucker for hardware too? I just pulled these out of my stash~

Here are some more pics~