Aged Pewter Accents with Artisan Enhancements Leaf & Foil Size and Bio Savvy Stain
This thrift store mirror was outdated and unattractive, but we felt it had potential. We envisioned a dusty blue paint finish with aged Pewter accents.
It was a great opportunity to play with the new Stain alongside our Leaf & Foil Size!
Artisan Enhancements Leaf & Foil Size is a quick and easy way to add metallic accents to a paint finish. We offer metallic foils in 14 beautiful colors!
The first step is to apply Leaf & Foil Size to the areas where you want to add a metallic finish. We first painted our mirror frame a pretty blue, allowed the paint to dry completely and then opened up our container of Size. We used our small stencil brush to apply Size to the raised floral corners of the frame first. Leaf & Foil Size should be applied sparingly. Leaf & Foil Size looks milky when first applied but will dry completely clear.
Leaf & Foil Size takes approximately 20 minutes to “tack up” before you can proceed with the foil application. We cut our Pewter Foil into small workable pieces. Laying the foil down “shiny side up,” we used a kitchen scrub brush to burnish the foil.
When the foil is removed, we are left with beautiful Pewter accents.
To give our pewter accents and overall paint finish an aged appearance, we turned to Ebony stain. Working in sections, we brushed the Ebony stain onto the mirror frame with our large round brush.
Using a lint free shop towel we immediately wiped back the stain, leaving it to settle into all of the cracks and crevices. Occasionally we would dampen our towel with water when we wanted to remove more of the stain in some areas.
Once we were finished with the glaze-effect of the stain, we decided to add a bit more age with a brush-flick technique. We simply loaded more Ebony Stain onto our round brush and used our finger to lightly “flick” a spattering of stain onto the flat areas of the mirror frame. We wouldn’t typically attempt this technique using a traditional stain without gloves, but the easy clean up and non toxic formula of Stains makes it a simple finish to acheive.
While waiting for the stain to dry, we decided to add just a few more touches of Pewter Foil to the raised areas of the frame.
Typically we recommend our Clear Finish for sealing metallic finishes as it enhances the shine. This time we chose Clear Topcoat Sealer for more of a matte finish as we felt it worked best for our “aged” effect. We used our Oval Brush to apply a very thin layer of sealer to the frame. We were careful to not allow any sealer to “pool” in the deep crevices. After allowing the first application of sealer to cure for 24 hours, we applied a second thin coat.
A dramatic transformation with just a few user-friendly, earth-friendly art products and techniques!
Feel free to pin this post for future reference or to share the inspiration! We hope you will consider giving these techniques a try! Please hashtag #artisanenhancements in your social media shares! We love to see what you’re working on!
