Paint Techniques for Your Craft Projects Part I

It's going to be impossible for me to cover all the different painting craft techniques.....there are soooo many! The only thing I can suggest, is if you see a particular faux paint affect that you like....do some research, and you'll find that none of them are that hard to create yourself. Some of them can be time consuming....some of them can be a lot simplier than what you think and you can really recreate a piece just by adding paint touches to different aspects of the item you're re-newing. A perfect example is the cabinet above.

I bought this piece of furniture at a second hand store, mainly for the size....not too big....not too small....and it was good and solid. It had a really bad water stain on the top so I used a marble paint finish to disguise it. Adding the black paint in the raised areas on the front, just made it more appealing with the marble top, don't ya think?

Marbling an object is really one of the easier paint finishes there is to do. Beware.....there are people out there (professionals) who make it sound a lot harder than what it is. I don't know if they don't want you to do it yourself so that they get the job, or what.....but after I did my research on the technique....I found out that there was no reason I couldn't do it myself.

The technique I have used is to:

Lightly sand (if wood)...heavy sand if it's a counter top (melamine or formica).
Paint a coat of primer.
Once that's dry....choose two other colors of paint that you want in the marble (in this case, black and beige). You will only need less than 1 quart of each color.
Using an old brush (no sense in messing up a new one and gives you a better affect), start with your main color, and dip just the end of your brush into the paint.
Apply the paint in a diagonal direction a little at a time, leaving some of the white primer showing.
From time to time....dip just the end of the brush in your second color (you don't have to "clean" the brush off...just wipe it on a rag or paper towel), and apply the second color the same as the first.
Keep going between the two colors until your whole object is covered and you get the desired effect that you like.

Once this has dried....take a small old artist bush and using either your second (less dominant color) or white (primer color....in which case I just used white acrylic paint). Put a little on your brush and jaggedly apply veining to your object (helps if you've drank a lot of coffee!). Immediately take your old clean brush and barely touching the paint you've just applied....feather it out so that it looks more natural.

When this has dried....put on 2-3 coats of polyurethane to protect the finish and you can be done at this point. I like to take it one step further and apply a paste wax (particularly if its a counter top since it will protect it more from moisture).

The cabinet above was the first time I had tried using the marbling affect....once done I went on to use it on other objects such as, on my own kitchen counter top and at a friend's house where I did her counter top in the kitchen as well as the counter in her master bath. It looked fantastic each time!

So, start out on a smaller object first....that way you can easily repaint if need be.....but I'm sure you'll find, it's really a technique that's easily do-able!

If you have any questions...I'd be more than happy to assist!