THAT PainterLady.com

Click Here if you didn't read part 1 -  Faux Leather Walls More questions from Sarah -

Thank you!  I will take your advice and let you know how it works out.  I'm sure the whole thing will take me a couple

…

The emails have been flying on this one.  The Faux Leather Wall Finish did not go as planned. Here is the original call for help:  Hi Debra!  I painted our master bath a beautiful red (three coats), then faux painted with the Woolie a top coat, raw umber glaze, in an attempt to achieve a beautiful deep red leather look.  It looks terrible!  I ended up with a washed out muddy looking brown over the red, with no textured look of leather at all.  What do I do now?! Thanks for your help!  Sarah Here is my first reply:

Hi Sarah, Oooops, I am so sorry you are have problems achieving a red leather look  on your walls.  If I had pictures It might be helpful. My first question is… do your walls have a sheen to them? Also, it takes very little brown to create a texture look. I need more information to be helpful.   Please tell me what  products you used and how you used the woolie. Be a descriptive as possible.  I will try to help you resolve this issue ASAP.  Debra  THAT Painter Lady.com

Sometimes I can visualize a problem wall without pictures if I can get enough of an explanation concerning the products and the technique used. Sarah did fire off a reply with all the information I needed:

Hello and thanks for responding!  I'm hoping there is something I can do to salvage my mess!  I used a satin latex paint which is according to the Woolie's instructions. 

The walls have a slight sheen, not too shiny.  I mixed a raw umber (deep chocolate) satin latex paint with glaze, 4 parts glaze to 1 part paint, 4 cups glaze to 1 cup paint, per a faux paint book's instructions.  I could not find colorant to buy like your website says, but the paint guy dipped the stick in his colorant and we matched it.  In total we used 2 1/2 cups of the glaze mixture in the master bath which is 262 square feet of wall.  That works out to be 1/2 cup of the raw umber in the entire room.

We brushed with a brush a little of the glaze on the wall, working in about 3' x 3' sections, enough glaze to work with it seemed, but maybe it was too much.  It seemed when we put less glaze on, it wasn't enough to work with, or it wasn't enough to spread around with the Woolie.  We tamped the Woolie up and down like the lady in the Woolie video! I'm thinking I might be able to save it by mixing my red with glaze, not sure how much of each to mix, then doing another top coat, perhaps thistime using crumpled plastic.  The red is called Spanish Tile, very nice. The Woolie seems to give more of an appearance of sponging rather than leather. 

Thanks so much for helping me!!!  Sarah  

And here is the faux painting leather answer :  

This reader is letting her husband help her choose the Faux Painting Technique for her Kitchen Cabinets. Here is the problem… sometimes husbands don’t have the vision -

I have to confess that I also take my husbands …

If you haven't read this series from the beginning… start here: Faux Aging Wallpaper Could you get an aged look on walls with tissue paper? We have already discussed the use of just paint to get a faux aged wallpaper look… but what about using …

If you haven't read part one and two of this article series… start here: Adding Age To Walls  So your done with the tough decisions and the hard work.  Now to the fun part… giving the walls some real age! This technique should be subtle, you don't want to shout that you have old walls. You will need A small artists brush A tooth brush Your Woolie pad (washed and dried from previous painting) Faux glaze (you can use water) the universal tints you used previously or the bottle of acrylic paint from previous wall technique. The small brush looks like the one in the photo next to the flat brush:  Kolinsky 5 Pc Watercolor Brush Set including 3/4 Flat Wash Brush Mix the dark color paint or tint with faux glaze to make it runny in a large flat pan. If it is too dark… add some white. The Woolie paint pad is used to get the effect next to the door. Just lightly dip the pad into the paint pan and press on to the wall, move down the wall and press again. Repeat until you are at the bottom of the wall, only adding paint if you aren't getting some paint showing on the wall. This will give lots of variation to the effect… if you don't load up each time.

If you haven't read the first part of this article click here: Faux Aged Wallpaper Look We have discussed the idea of an aging wall paper look in the previous article. The actual walls in the Pottery Barn Catalog Photo may have been papered or may just be aged plaster.   In days of yesteryear, plain white wallpaper may have been used in rooms of not consequence, such as maids quarters or storage rooms. Really old wallpaper was hand painted or stenciled, thus you could get plain wallpaper to just paste on the walls. I would guess that this was to protect the walls… maybe paint was more expensive or unavailable. The photograph  (shown in the previous article) doesn't have peeling wallpaper, so it may just be aged plaster walls. Or… because their are vertical lines on the wall as well as cracks, the aged look may be of aged walls that the wallpaper was stripped off and the aging process transfered to the walls between the paper.  In any case… I will try to give some ideas for creating a similar look to new walls with just paint and with paper and paint. BTW, here is an article about painting over wallpaper  First… Just Paint: You know we need a very subtle paint technique, and we want an aged look. The ideas is to work from the bottom up… or back to front with a technique. First a soft faux paint on the entire wall and then the aging. Got it? A soft aged faux painting technique is very easy to achieve… and the good thing is it does not have to perfect.  The base coat for a simple aged faux painting is usually what ever you already have on the walls. Cool huh? If the walls are white, off white or beige… your good to go. If they are textured or smooth finished walls… your good to go!  Yahoo … The wall finish must not be a FLAT Paint. If you splash a bit of water on the wall and it can't be wiped off… you have flat paint. If you rub your finger across some newspaper ink and then rub it on the wall… and it can't be washed off with just water… you have flat paint.  You absolutely will need to repaint your walls with a satin or eggshell finish paint.

What a cool idea this is.  Recently a reader of this website sent me a personal request in the mail (desperate for help). She found an aged and distressed wallpaper look in a Pottery Barn catalog that she loved.  But… can't figure out a technique to achieve the look.  What's a girl to do?  Call on THAT Painter Lady for help of course… :)  Here is her question:

Debra! I saw a photo of what appears to be a distressed wallpaper effect– it looks as if somebody put up off-white wallpaper around the time of the Civil War and her descendants never changed it (or washed it, either) so now the BEAUTIFULLY worn, yellowed, browned, water stained, rumpled, streaked, and all of those good antiquey - vintage things. Could you help me with suggestions as to how I could achieve this look? I'd be very grateful. Ann 

Here is the photograph from Pottery Barn:

So how would you achieve this look?

I get asked this question many times.

How can I paint my walls with a leather faux look?

It is very easy to get a faux leather look on walls. Textured walls are the easiest, but it isn't a big challenge to do the same on smooth finished walls. Two things you must remember: Color Choices Glaze Color Choice First, color choice. You can choose deep rich colors for faux leather or you can create a pale buckskin color that would be good for a western theme room. I will stick to the deep colors for this article. Red, Green and Blue are really the only colors I would try this technique with.  Base color on walls would then be a Fire Engine Red, Kelly Green or Royal-Marine Blue. The reason for the bright colors is that the glaze over the top is very dark and if you start out with a deep color, the walls will just look black. Remember to prime your walls with a dark primer, because dark paints will take many coats to cover… especially red.  You can find  Faux Leather Wallpaper, but this technique is so easy to do… why bother. When you get tired of it… just paint over the faux leather painting.   I mix my own glaze and you can do this easily.

…

Faux Painting Grass Cloth on walls requires a ton of patience and a steady hand. You should do this technique with two painters. One to apply the glaze and one to apply the brushing technique.

This is also technique that looks much better on smooth walls instead of textured walls.

Tool tip: If the brush used has bristles that are too fine, the technique will resemble linen instead of grass cloth.

Also the color choices are important. Grasscloth is formed with, well… grass. So it would stand to reason that it would be green. Not so fast. It is dead grass. So it will be brown and gold with very light hints of green. Also… consider that it is woven. So shadows on the grass cloth will be greyed out greens or wheat colors.

Natural Grasscloth Book Tan on Seafoam Authentic Grasscloth Wallpaper

When I was faux painting full time, I was always on the hunt for cheap supplies and good deals on equipment. Some of those sale items can be found locally, but most of the great deals are available …

I don't know why… but sometimes I get questions that are really out of my league.  I am very much an interior color person. Choosing exterior colors can open up a can of worms.  Some areas of the country and some styles of homes are not suited to the same …

Wow… the subject of faux marble is really heating up.  I just got another question asking how to paint light green marble on a column.

I’d like to paint my wooden columns a light green faux marble. How would I achieve this?Amy

I found this great little …

Wow… this takes me back to the old days of faux painting kits. One of my first faux painting kits used a peach glaze. You know… when peach and sea foam grean was so popular.  Yep, I am dating myself. I know most of those kits are not available now. …

Although I haven't tried Faux Painting With Plastic… I have seen the finish and it is stunning.   This isn't the finish where you blot the wall with balled up plastic grocery bags, but rather a glaze is applied to the wall and then a thin film of plastic sheeting …