Painting the Top Coat for Aging a Picture Frame

Video transcription

We are now ready to add the top coat color to our base coat and see how the crackle finish works and then when it's dry I'll show you how the paraffin technique works. So make sure you have plenty of paint out. Because like I mentioned you cannot backtrack on it. So I usually start at the angle of the board. Go down in one swoop. If you're not where the crackle is you can go back. But you just need to remember where that's at. And I know I don't have any in here so I can go back and touch this up. I think my other crackle is down here. And it doesn't have to be a perfect smooth coat because you want some of that dark to show through that gives it more of that aged look. You can see this is starting to crackle. I had a run here so I'm going to wipe that out real quick. Now you can see where it's starting to crackle. And as that paint dries more you'll get a little bit better crackle. Can you see? Very interesting technique. Basically I'm just painting the edges here because I've got a lot of paint. It has a tendency to want to run. Okay, now I'm going to go here where there's more crackle so I've got to make sure I have plenty of paint in my brush. Okay, here we go. Again, I kind of come in at the angle because I don't want to overlap on this and I make one sweep, and it's not crackling yet so I can go back over it ever so slightly. It's better if you don't brush over it. Once it starts crackling I'll show you what happens if you do. So we'll let it start here a little bit. In the meantime i can paint my other edge so that you can see. Remember you want to paint down to your masking tape so you have that nice clean edge. The inside here doesn't matter because you're going to have your picture in there. So you don't have to worry about that side. It gets a little tricky now because all sides are wet so just bear that in mind. That's why it's nice to put a paint cloth or wax paper or cardboard or anything. Now you're beginning to see this nice crackle that we have.