Have you ever gone into a store or other commercial space and noticed a great faux finish on the wall? Most of the time you can figure out what products or colors were used… but sometimes you might be stumped. How did they do that?

I got a great question from one of my readers and she is stumped.

I set out to research and find all the answers to her questions.

 When I was paying my telephone bill yesterday, I noticed a beautiful wall in the building, with all different colors, and it looked to have a somewhat metallic finish. 
They weren't sure what it was called, but they said it involved applying pieces of paper and painting over them?  I have done many types of faux painting, but I've never heard of this one. 
The wall was gorgeous, and I kept picturing what it would look like with a combination of harvest colors.  Do you know of any type of technique involving the use of paper? 
By the way, they said something about painting the entire wall "blue" first, and then applying these pieces of colored paper and painting over them.  I'm imagining the paper to be the consistency of tissure paper. Thank you!

 Isn't this a great question?

First lets imagine some of the techniques that might be confusing from this description.

• they said it involved applying pieces of paper and painting over them

• If you are applying colored tissue, then you would not paint over it.

• Do you know of any type of technique involving the use of paper?
  

• Yes, you can use brown paper bags, wallpaper, newspaper, copy paper or tissue paper… tissue is the most common. Specialty tissue is available with a shiny side that does keep the glaze from soaking in. If you are using a faux finish over the top of tissue, this might be necessary.

• they said something about painting the entire wall "blue" first,

• Using a base coat color like blue, would only be necessary if you were going to leave the tissue unpainted or unglazed over the top. I am sure this technique required a blue based wall, but without knowing the exact technique used, I don't know why it would be necessary.

You might use torn tissue paper for two reasons:

• Create a texture on your walls or to camouflage some minor damage.
• Colored tissue would leave you with sticking colorful overlaps that couldn't be repeated with a faux finish.

But… colored tissue tends to bleed, so test… test… test.  

For a metallic finish… of course you could use a soft brush and dry brush on a metallic glaze, just on the high spots.  

I can see a wall filled with deep plum, cranberry, logan green and ultramarine blue. Then highlighted with gold. Gorgeous. 

I found two great torn tissue papered wall tutorials here: 

McCloskey's has a great tutorial for Tissue Paper Walls 

Here is another set of instructions for Paper 'Plique 

Let me know if I can help any more.

Technorati Tags: torn tissue walls, faux painted, metalic glaze, how to