Juniper and I finished our Faux Finish project that I mentioned earlier.

It came out looking really good, and was technically easy, despite the time it took. So I thought I’d give a run down on the technique we settled on, in case anyone out there wants to take the easy route to a good looking wall.

Instead of doing a glazing finish, where the paint is mixed with a glaze medium that keeps it wet, we went with a dark on light, in stages plan. We picked some complimentary colors (warm orange and rust red, staying away from pink reds by suggestion of or friend Sonny) and we used all egg-shell finish. We prepped the walls with a a solid orange coat, applied with a roller and let to dry. We didn’t worry about cutting the orange coat in all the way to the trim. Instead we left some white wall next to the trim and cut in with our next color. Red.

We took our red, and a handfull of disposable brushes, and stab brushed it onto the wall.

First we cut in the trim with a normal brush technique and good brushes, then we stabbed the brush lines away with our disposable brushes, and finally we brought the cut in line down, away from the trim, in organic shapes.

After the room was cut in, then we had our fun. We basically took the starter shapes at the top cut line, and began to grow them down the wall, like plump and fuzzy vines. We also left many orange spaces untouched. Then after the vines were painted in, we expanded them into the remaining orange, but we did this with very dry brushes, so as to end up with marble like swirls of orange set into a backdrop of the deeper red. The end result is lovely, and we are happily watching movies and reading books in our new awesome faux finished living room. I highly recommend trying it some time.