Saturday, September 29, 2018

Distressing The Cross



Hello Darlings,

I hope this early warm and breezes Saturday morning finds you either all shopped out from last night, or ready to grab up today's specials.

As for me I am relaxing today, but I wanted to share with you my completed makeover of the box crosses I found early this week while browsing one of our local thrift shops. Since they appear to have been molded with some type of acrylic and painted to look like wood carvings, I decided against re-staining and went with distressing instead.

BEFORE


To distress the box crosses I used the same color scheme of the lamps I repaired earlier this year, which is black and copper. I began by covering a portion of the inner frame, the leaves and the crosses with painter's tape.  Once that was done, I sprayed everything with a black satin paint and let them dry for a day.

After the black paint was dried, I removed the painter's tape, and hand painted the leaves, the inner frame, and the crosses with the metallic copper paint. Once the copper paint had dried about eight hours, I added a thin layer of the black paint, and let them set a half an hour. I then gently wiped away some of the black paint with paper towels to expose the copper paint beneath giving the frames their distressed look. 

AFTER


Again, I let the paint dry for a day, then brushed on some fast drying clear satin polyurethane to finish and set them aside for 18 hours.  Below is the finish project all nicely hung.






Although the satin finish looks more glossier than I intended, still I like the result. 

Until next time,

Chow, Darlings