OLD WORLD TRAVEL - vintage travel themed chest

This week I've been working on a

vintage travel themed chest of drawers.

It started out forest green. When was it in style to

 paint with that color.

Oh ya the 80's!

The entire dresser was scraped and sanded.

(disclaimer) NO STRIPPER (disclaimer)

was employed during the making of this film.

George was upset, he wanted a stripper.

I purposely left tiny hints of each of the 3 paint

 colors that had been on it to add to the vintage feel.

Green, white, and the original cream color.

After getting it all cleaned and sanded I started to

 paint the *stamps* on the face of the drawers.

It was all done by hand as you can clearly see with

 FRANCE's *R*.

Before adding the elaberate brass handles and

 keyplate it was stained with a walnut stain

and polished with finishing wax.

While I was doing the embellishments I tryed many
 technics but this worked the best and easiest.

First I sketch with pencil my Fleur De Li, then went
 over the outline with a fine sharpie marker. It was
 then filled in with fat chisel tip marker. The finer
 sharpie marker doesn't seem to come off during the
 antiqueing part. You can see above how the outline
 stayed and the filled in part lifted just right.

Do you prefer to scrape and sand or use a stripper?

Have you done hand painting on furniture if so how did it go?