Here is a nice and easy little decorative painting technique for adding some distinctive punch to a room. Some have said it simulates the look of needlepoint. The technique looks great and is in fact not difficult to execute,but as in most faux or decorative painting finishes there are some tips to ensure success.

Metallic Plaster Lace Technique ( for my sample)

I based coated the surface with a coat of Black Cherry metallic paint from Modern Masters and allow to dry.
Tip: Make sure you do not leave any holidays or very hard lap lines. Remember much of this metallic paint will be visible when this finish is complete.

Select lace that has a design you like.
Tip: Prior to using your lace, lay it flat on a work table and spray it with a spray starch product. Allow it to dry then spray the other side. You do this to take any “stretch” out of the lace.

This particular decorative finish looks best (and is infinitely easier to do) in panels rather than attempting to cover the entire wall surface. The boarders can then be framed out using decorative wood strips or molding other method.

Once your lace has dried from the starch it should feel somewhat stiff and be much easier to position on to your predetermined panel areas. Tape the top of the lace onto your wall but do not tape the sides.

I selected a metallic plaster from Modern Masters called eggplant. The metallic plaster is similar in color to the metallic paint used to base coat the wall. A tone on tone approach is always a safe bet with this decorative technique.

Once the lace is secured, I used a 6 inch flexible Bondo knife as my application tool. I troweled the metallic plaster onto and through the lace starting from top to bottom. Apply enough plaster to cover the lace but don’t get heavy handed. If your lace for example is about 1/32 in thickness, then you will want to apply the plaster at about 1/16 to 1/8 of thickness. Do not over work an area with plaster. One or two passes should be all it takes to cover an area.
Tip: Be careful to avoid wrinkling or crinkling of the lace. The starch should help avoid this but keep an eye out for possible problem areas.

Once you have covered the entire piece of lace, go back and gently scrape any areas of excess plaster, if any. You should be able to see the design pattern of the lace.

Allow the plaster to sit for a couple minutes before removing the lace. Working from top to bottom remove the lace by peeling it back gently.

The lace can be rinsed out, dried and reused.

This decorative painting technique is pretty straight forward and the tips I provided should make things go easier. What I like particularly about this faux finish is the contrast between the very shiny metallic base coat color and the not quite so shiny metallic plaster color.

Of course you will want to try the technique and try out different color ways prior to working on a wall.
Actually this technique works great on furniture although I haven’t done it myself.

Should you have any questions please ask and I’ll reply soon. Thanks

Yesterday I started to describe a decorative wall finish that uses a metallic glaze over a texture of applied tissue paper. Well, I received a call from, where else, Barcelona and became distracted. I’m planning to move back to Barcelona and with any luck, open a studio and teach decorative finishes there.

DISCLAIMER: I just finished writing the entire process and in retrospect, and wow, it sure does look like an involved technique. BUT it really isn’t folks. HOW TO’s always sound more difficult because I try to include all the little details.

OK, so here is my version of a metallic glazed tissue paper application. Keep in mind that there are several different recipes for this decorative finish. I believe that mine is a pretty fool proof method and I am all about making faux finishes easy to execute.

These are the materials you’ll need.

* Tissue paper from a packing store or craft store. Make sure it is not the type of paper that has a wax backing.
* Wall paper sizing.
* Metallic paint. I used Modern Masters Teal available at several paint stores. Check their website for locations.
* A good quality glazing medium. I used Aquaglaze from Faux Effects.
* A small dry foam roller.
* A stencil of your choice.

This technique will work best over a smooth wall surface.

Prior to starting, tear off the edges of the tissue paper so that the edges are ragged looking.

I also try to tear my paper into irregular shapes and crumple the paper into balls to create wrinkles.

Have a bag to hold your tissue paper and a separate bag to hold the tissue paper with straight edges only.

Some kind of plaster medium for the relief stenciling. Melanie Royals of Royal Design Studio ( the best source of stencils and inspiration) uses a mix of premixed joint compound and Elmer’s glue. Any plaster type material will work.

Step by Step Process

Decide where you would like to have the relief stencil effect to appear on your walls. Trowel the plaster medium through your stencil and allow the to dry fully. These stenciled elements won’t need to be sealed so don’t be afraid to use dry wall mud.

Thin down the wall paper paste by adding 20 % water. Wall paper paste usually comes pretty thick but since we are using a more delicate and much thinner tissue paper, you will need to make the wall paper paste thinner as well.

Slather the paste on a 3 by 3 section of wall.

Uncrumple a piece of paper and apply to the wall. Smooth out the paper leaving a slight crinkle pattern. It’s important not to leave large pockets of paste under the paper. Push the paper into the stenciled areas with a chip brush.

Using the dry foam roller, further smooth out the paper and get rid of air pockets.

Apply your next piece of tissue making sure to not overlap the two pieces too much. Overlap should not be more than 1/8th of an inch. Again you the foam roller to smooth out and make these two pieces look as it they were one piece.

For the borders use the pieces of tissue with straight edges that you saved in a separate bag.

Continue around your wall surface applying the paper making sure to not leave any bare spots, over sized wrinkles or large overlaps. It is actually a whole lot easier than it sounds. You get into a rhythm and it flows quickly.

Allow the tissue paper to dry over night then roll on a coat of glaze medium. This glaze layer acts as a sealer.

Make a metallic glaze by mixing 1 part Modern Masters Teal metallic paint and 4 parts glaze medium. This glaze needs to be pretty translucent because the aim is to just give the tissue a metallic shimmer rather than a complete solid coverage.

Apply the glaze with a foam roller in a 3 foot by 3 foot area and immediately begin smoothing it out and feathering the edges. You will actually remove more of the glaze allowing the white of the tissue paper to peek through. The glaze will accumulate around the relief stencil and appear darker in those areas which will enhance the effect of the stencil.

Continue glazing the wall till your done. Jeeze.

Here is another tissue paper sample done with a copper glaze.

It appears that every faux finish or decorative artist has in his or her portfolio, sample boards of decorative wall treatments that they never expect to actually get the chance to install in a fine home.

While the decorative technique is fine and the sample board is attractive, you just have a feeling that it wouldn’t work well on all the walls of an otherwise elegant room. Perhaps it would work as an accent wall but not an entire room.

Well, that is the way I felt for the longest time about the several tissue paper techniques I have in my portfolio. Somehow this technique of gluing tissue paper onto a wall and giving it color just didn’t sound hi-end enough to me to justify even discussing it with my clients who typically own very expensive grand homes.

I have several really nice tissue paper sample boards each done with a slightly different decorative slant, but I only displayed them to prospective clients to show them the different kinds of faux finishes I could execute well.

Once in a while a client would pick up a tissue paper sample board from my portfolio and inspect it closely but rarely did the conversation go beyond a compliment or a comment on the colors.

Until one day a client looked at one of the tissue paper samples that was given a metallic glaze decorative finish and raved that it was precisely what she had in mind.

Strangely enough, I tried to dissuade her form these finishes thinking as I always did concerning tissue paper techniques, that it may look good on a board but not a large surface. She, however, felt that this technique and color selection was perfect for her powder room. Well, that was good enough for me.

The sample board she selected was a tissue paper technique that incorporated a relief stencil underneath the paper. It was then given color using a nice metallic teal blue glaze I made. Below is a photo of the actual sample board she selected. Metallic faux finishes rarely photograph well but here it is.

Tomorrow I will detail how I did my version of this tissue paper technique. The process will seem straight forward but there are nuances that you should be aware of.

metallic decorative finish

The faux finish technique that I am about to detail was described by my client as being Tuscan. As I said earlier , he is from France and has traveled in Europe extensively, so in all likelihood he has really seen a Tuscan style wall finish. So fine, if he calls it Tuscan, then Tuscan it is. Truth be told, since this decorative wall treatment or faux venetian plaster technique is rather easy to do and pretty foolproof, I have also labeled it a Pompeii finish. Whatever label sells this faux finish is fine with me.

So here is the step by step procedure for this faux finish. The products necessary are listed in the previous post.

1) Thin Sandstone with water. Mix 1 part Sandstone to 2 parts water. Your Sandstone mix should be a watery slurry. You will want to mix enough so that you can roll on a very quick coat. This first coat is just to give the wall some tooth. So don’t spend too much time worrying about roller marks or even coverage. Roll on this thinned Sandstone and allow to dry fully.

2) Now to your base coat. Mix 1 part Sandstone to 1 part premixed joint compound. Create 3 separate batches and tint each one a different color. I tinted my batches in the following way, batch 1 was tinted to a pale orange color. Batch 2 was tinted a slightly darker red/orange color. The third batch was tinted medium toned terracotta color.

You will have to create smaller batches of tinted mix to determine the colors that work best for you because different joint compound will take color differently and you may want to alter the final outcome anyway. This faux finish recipe is more about the technique than the actual colors.

3) Quickly and haphazardly trowel on all three colors of the tinted faux plaster onto the surface. Create random patches of all three colors all over. Try to keep the lightest color batch as your predominate color. You can blend these a little but what you want are distinct colors on your wall. Don’t worry about what it looks like, you will be covering up nearly 90 % of this anyway so just throw it up there quickly. Allow to dry overnight.

Again, this is supposed to be a distressed aged plaster look. You really can’t go wrong so don’t over think it or spend too much time on the steps so far. You should be able to do this practically with your eyes closed.

4) Once this color coat of faux plaster has dried, you can sand or knock down any unusual high points. Mix a large batch of 1 part Sandstone and 1 part joint compound. This batch will cover most of your wall so mix enough. Tint this batch with just a small amount of Raw Sienna tint. The color you are aiming for is like a butter milk color, a pale creamy yellow color. Trowel this faux venetian plaster mix over 90 % of the surface leaving behind exposed areas of colored plaster.

This step is very similar to the cat face technique done with other plasters but here you sort of want to be a little more deliberate as to where you place the cat faces. You don’t want to create them uniformly across your wall. This is where a little artistic foresight is useful. Make it look chipped plaster. Imagine the areas where the plaster would actually chip from the wall after a couple hundred years of wear.

5) The final step of decorative faux finish technique is to create a couple of tinted glazes that will be used to give the wall it’s final appearance. I used Faux Glaze by Faux Effects but any glaze medium will work. I also used Stain and Seal from faux Effects to give my glazes color but again, and water based stain would work.

I used stains as my tinting medium because I wanted the glaze to be translucent. I find that universal tints give a glaze an opaque quality that I didn’t like.

My first glaze was a mix of 8 parts glaze medium to 1 part Antique Mahogany stain.
The second glaze was mix was 8 parts glaze medium to 1 part Antique Cherry stain.

And again, these were my color selections, you could change the stain colors but keep them similar to the color tones I used.

With a couple of large high density foam sponges, available at Home Depot, and a couple buckets of water I began washing the walls with both colors. Try to blend the colors somewhat and avoid having large areas where you only use one color of glaze. The pale butter milk looking plaster will take the reddish colors nicely and and leave you with a surface that almost glistens.

Here a couple images of the work in progress. I plan on trying this same technique with more muted colors next time. The finish does look like a hand crafted Italian plaster that has aged and chipped and discolored. A faux venetian plaster technique with lots of color options.