Tiny bubbles

It's Friday.  Surgery went well except for a little too much bleeding.  Injections went well and I baked a cake for them to celebrate the end of treatments.  But the waist high stocking and the foot wrap with the big shoe is not comfortable on an 88 degree day.  That's OK!  It's done.  The endoscopy and stress test will come in a month or so.

 

I'm working on the sink base, finally decided on color.  Cranberry beneath Kodiak Gray, a greenish brownish grayish neutral.  How does it go with the other cabinets in Studio Taupe?  Not good but it doesn't matter.  I'm repainting.  Yep.  Idiot.  Can't help it!  It just doesn't look good with the soapstone in my dark kitchen so after viewing a Facebook entry on Primitives in Pine, I ran out to get the Behr Riviera Beach that was used.  Love love love.  Light, but not as light as the samples I had before.  The Kodiak Gray, a Pratt & Lambert older color, is soft and fabulous.  Just enough contrast for the sink base to be different.  It's what I used for these samples. 

 

I wanted to show you a trick that you might already know about to get a primitive paint finish.  It requires - not the blow torch - but a heat gun.  The standard heat gun for removing paint.  If you heat the gun first, brush on a thick coat of paint, then gun it while wet, you get this.

The paint will start bubbling very quickly and you need to move the gun away or all the paint will become one bubble.  You can push down the bubbles with your finger and when dry will be a rough finish, or wait until it's completely dry and scrape off the bubbles for this finish. 

The paint beneath doesn't get a chance to bubble and the top ones will scrape off exposing the under color.  This area on the top left is a basic thinner coat and it won't bubble at all, not enough paint and it dries too quickly.  As soon as the tiny bubbles started I moved the gun away and this creates just a rough aged looking finish without the really primitive mess in the above photo.

That's it.  Haven't decided if I will crackle or scrape but wanted to show this trick.  You can add an additional coat over the area and do it again if it didn't bubble as much as you wanted.  The paint must be a decent coat, but not real thick, and wet.  Once it dries the bubbles stop so if you use the gun before it is hot enough, it will dry the paint instead of bubble it. 

 Be careful!!  Have a silicone mat or something non-flammable to set the gun on, watch where you point it (wild hair sets to flame quickly - trust me), and you can also burn the paint.  Practice, be careful.

Edit - received a few emails from readers that have used this method and found that the hardness of the surface will vary with the new super wall paints.  Their bubbles did not harden to "crispy"!  Best test the brand you are using on a sample. It works really well with the acrylic craft paints but I can't vouch for the difference in Behr, BM, Valspar.  I use flat and haven't had a problem.

 

Enjoy your weekend - ours will be a hot one.  Yay!!!

 

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