Making a great impression...ist

This week's first project was a dining room.  A nice Woolie job, tweaked to show up as well at night as in the day.  Fairly simple and straight forward.  If you want to do it yourself, the directions come with the tool, but if you run into problems, please feel free to email me.  I used to demo for the Woolie company at Home Depot, home shows, and the state fair, and I've used them frequently for about a dozen years.  If you get splotchy results (splotchy in a not-good way), it's probably this:  an old, dry base coat combined with too little paint, and timid little movements.  Be bold.  You can pat it down more if it's too wild to start.

Classic Color Mesh (TM) with a woolie tool, using two shades of chocolate, plus blackberry and cream.  Yum!

The next room wasn't so simple.  Since the client was adamant about "no VOC" paint, and glaze doesn't come that way, I had to figure out how to get the effect without the material.  I used paint bases and custom tinted them.  Deep tone base can work as glaze, though it doesn't have the extenders and slipperiness.  In this case, drying time could be short, and semi-opaque was fine, so it was just a matter of working it until it looked finished. like this:



Makes me think of the colors in a Monet.

 

First, use a double roller to roll dark blue and thistle over a thistle base, then trowel some on, too.  Allow to dry.



Next, trowel on some bright blue, allow to dry...




...then some icy blue, and allow to dry.




Then start blending by sponging on small areas of color, and then with a flexible rubber trowel lightly whisking it out, using a rag to soften even more, and with the sponge adding pops of lime green, here and there.  On this step, it's really just a matter of playing with it until you like the look.  Unlike most glaze techniques, if you do something you don't like, you can let it dry, and go back over it with the lighter colors, which are opaque, and build it up again.



Don't want to do it yourself?  Check out my website theartofthehome.com for my portfolio and info on how to hire me.

You can email me for more explicit directions for these two finishes dawnmariedelara@gmail.com