How to Faux Paint by Striping

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Shana Siegel here at Just Scenic Creations here in New York City and in this clip we are going to talk about how to faux paint using striping and I've got all the tools you would probably need laid out in front of you. You need some sort of measuring tool. You need to line out all your stretching and decide what width of stripe you want. Since this is kind of a small sample I am going with a thinner stripe. If you are doing this on a wall you are going to want to use a level to make sure that your stripes are actually straight. I'm just going with this squaring tool and I'm just going to pencil in my stripes and so what you do then now that you have got your lines drawn out is very carefully tape every other line like this and you want to make sure that you really kind of go back over and push that tape down, painter's tape will not damage your walls so you don't have to worry about pulling it off once you have put it down but you do have to worry about properly adhering it because it will bleed and not be a clean line. So now we have laid out our tape and it's all done. I like to use gloves when I am using a ragging technique because your hands tend to get very messy and it tends to get all over you. With latex paint you don't have to be too worried about that stuff but it can start to get to you when you are cleaning yourself off a lot when you work as much as I do. So gloves are a good idea and what I've got here is a glaze that I have mixed up. I usually like to use the same color family in these kinds of techniques I think it comes out really well. What a glaze is is it is slightly transparent, it could have no pigment at all but it generally lets whatever is behind it seep through a little bit so when you use colors that are in the same family it goes together very nice because they just work well, it's a safe bet. If you want to mix up your own glaze it is pretty easy. You can take a little pigment from the paint that you have got on hand and just put that into any kind of clear water based polyurethane or if you can find glazes at your local paint store. Alright so what I'm doing is kind of just a ragging technique with the striping and all I'm doing is kind of just gently layering on a little bit like this and just kind of dab it around. You can be kind of like messy with it because the paint should really help you to get whatever it is and this one will end up being a very subtle finish. Any time you do any kind of faux painting I would always recommend doing a small sample for yourself so that a) you can get the hang of the technique and you are not practicing on your walls or whatever piece that you decide to use but b) so that you know exactly what it is going to turn out like before you start. So this is kind of what you'll get as a finished product for your striping technique and I would be a little bit more careful about pencil lines probably. You can erase those before your glazing step or you can make sure that the tape does not tape over your pencil so you are actually painting over it with an opaque color. Also here is what happens when you approach it a little too quickly. It will peel off the paint when it is not yet dry. The good news with paint is that you can always always save the colors that you have on hand until you are really done and you can always just go back with that base and do it over again. It is really, it blends together and it is not going to show if you redo a patch so this has been how to faux finish using the striping technique."