Wood Look with Paint
I wanted a cute, vintage looking wooden mirror. So in typical Kelly fashion, I started stripping the paint off of an ornately carved mirror I had to reveal the wood underneath, without actually knowing if there was wood underneath. Turns out, there wasn’t. But that didn’t stop my wooden mirror dreams. With some craft paint, spray paint, and tiny paintbrushes I stole from my daughters’ painting sets, I turned a painted mirror into a wooden lookalike. And you can to. Here’s how!
Materials:
ornate painted mirror or picture frame
brown craft paint ( this one is very dark. If you want a lighter look, use lighter paint colors)
plastic container for paints
gloves
small paint brushes
Note: Since you will be painting this piece, you don’t need to strip the paint off first like I did. If you would like to strip it, I used this and it worked really well. You’ll need a wire brush to get the paint out of the small nooks and crannies.
Here’s a photo of my mirror before I attacked it with paint stripper. It was cute, but I don’t have a spot for a beige/pink mirror anymore so I decided to change it up.
Step 1: Paint over your piece with the brown craft paint. You can take a sponge or a sponge brush to wipe off excess if needed. Don’t stress. It will not look good yet. Keep going!
Step 2: Spray some of the brown spray paint into a plastic container. Do a small bit at a time because it dries quickly. Brush/dust the darker spray paint color over the raised parts of the piece. The spray paint is nice and watery so it works well for this. Adding this darker color to the raised portions helps give it dimension and makes it look more like real wood.
Step 3: That’s it! There is no step 3, other than to gaze in awe and wonder at your “wooden” work of art.
Now go make something look like wood! And if you do and you share it to Instagram, please tag me @hartley_home so I can see it!
*This method worked well on a carved mirror. I haven’t tried it on a flat piece to see if it would have similar success.