Elementary Organization: a swedish gucci.

I know, right? In what free world is Gucci Swedish? Perhaps a more fitting title to my post would have been "A Gucci Inspired Ikea Solsta Olarp Chair Hack DIY Tutorial", but how un-fun is that?! Lawd. That's a title only NPR would find exciting.

As the Mr. and I began to put the finishing touches on the den (flowers in vases, throws folded, etc.), we still felt like it was a bit empty. After spreading out all of our apartment furniture throughout la nueva casita, we really only had a couch and chair available for seating in the den. We could sit about four people comfortably, but our entertaining dreams were a bit loftier than four invitees.

Being rather tired of spending money, I really started honing in on this Solsta Olarp chair at Ikea:

At 65 bucks a pop, you really can't find a better price for seating, but the appearance of such a chair was *SO SAD*.

Obvi, the chairs were going to need a little oomph if I was going to be proud to have a pair of them in our den, but I wasn't sure what to do. I initially thought about painting bold stripes on the chairs, but wasn't quite sure how I would handle the rounded back and cushion. Dropping the idea of painting stripes all over the chair, I still kept the idea of stripes in my mind.

Whilst on a mountain-laden vacation with the fam, my cousin and I were looking at handbags and we kept talking about the classically fabulous single, bold, vertical stripe that Gucci so beautifully wears.

It is such a classic, simple concept that we thought could really pop with some fun colors on the canvas backing of the Ikea chairs, no? I liked the green but really wanted to make it a bit more "kelly" than "forest", and I absolutely love the perfection of kelly green paired with navy blue.

I collected my supplies...

2 Solsta Olarp Chairs

one-inch FrogTape

Behr's "Navy Blue" flat wall paint

Behr's "Green Grass" flat wall paint

I unpacked the chairs from all of their wrappings...

...and used a tape measure to find the absolute center of each chair's back.

I decided that I wanted my center stripe to be three inches thick, so I used a level to insure that the lines I traced were absolutely vertical from the measured points on both the chair's back and the seat cushion.

After lightly tracing my center stripe in pencil, I taped off the chair and cushion with the FrogTape.

I began by applying a thin, dry coat of the Navy Blue paint...

...and once it was dry, I added a second, thicker coat!

While the paint was still damp, I removed the tape to see the results!

I repeated the same process on the second chair and allowed the center stripe to drive overnight. The following day, I applied painter's tape along the outer edge of the center stripe so that no green paint would mar the blue stripe. I decided to use blue painter's tape here since it is a bit less sticky than the FrogTape and would not pull up the blue paint I had already applied.

As the tape is one inch wide, I used small strips of tape to help measure and mark off the width of the green, outer stripes.

I then lined up the painter's tape with the edge of the markers so that the outer stripes were taped-off completely.

After removing the marker-place-holders, I applied a thin, dry coat of green paint followed by a thicker coat!

Just like with the blue center stripe, I removed the tape while the paint was still damp to prevent peeling, and be still my heart, a Swedish Gucci met my eyes!

The pair of chairs come together perfectly with a little octagonal campaign table to create the added seating we needed at a sinfully cheap price with a splash of Gucci!