Marbling of the Fireplace

Now I will tell the very frustrating, but in the end rewarding, story of how I did a faux marble finish on my fireplace.

As you remember from one of my earlier posts, I decided on a color scheme of greens, creams, and golds. So, naturally the fireplace would have to be green marble. And that was where my troubles began. First tip of advice: Do Not begin your first faux marbling endeavor with Green Marble! As I found out, there is a very fine line between a good green marble, neon green, GI Joe camo green, and too dark forest green. Lets just say I went through a lot of paint with this project.

• Waaay too dark!

• GI Joe camo fireplace! hahaha sooo horrible

Once you find your colors though, its not as bad. now I'm no expert on marbling, and used many YouTube videos for assistance, but this is what I did. All you need to do is paint base colors, low-light veins, and high-light veins. For the base you want to have a mixture of colors, very close in tone, that give an overall flow to the piece. These basic directions are what your veins will follow. I decided to use acrylic paint because its easier to water down and blend together.

Next are the veins. The hardest part of this step was finding a brush that was small enough. Eventually though, I found a really, really, tiny brush. To apply the veins I held the brush lightly in my hand and dragged it across the surface. It made a natural and random line all by itself. When the paint was still wet I used a brush dipped in water to make any needed changes. The I dotted a dry flat brush over the veins to blend them nicely. That was pretty much it. I really suggest checking out videos on it online, they are so helpful.



The pictures are pretty blurry but here is my finished piece! I really like that way it finally turned out! Now I'm just debating weather or not to but a gloss on it.

Beginning the Walls!

Wow! It has been a very long time since my last post, but I have a good reason. Work! Schoolwork, miniature work, tutoring jobs, and more have kept me very busy. Just because I haven't blogged, however, doesn't mean I haven't made some great progress on my chateau. For this post I've decided to write about the paneling on the fireplace wall, first floor.

As I researched (googled imaged rococo detailing for hours on end) I kept thinking that I would never be able to find a trim from a store that would truly be rococo. This was made even more clear when I found some antique findings at a jewelry show that would fit perfectly on the walls. So, I decided to carve my very own trims for the paneling in the room! A little crazy, yes, but worth it, completely. The first thing I did was draw up some sketches that would tie in nicely with the findings.
After I found a design I liked, I began to block out the basic shapes in balsa wood with an Exacto knife. After that I started to sand, smooth, and add detail to the wood with my dremel (which I LOVE by the way!)

As for steps, that's pretty much it, but don't be tricked into thinking this is easy stuff. The carving takes a lot of patience at this small of a scale. My first trim took me about 4 hours, mostly because I was being very cautious and everything was new. Once I got used to the design and tools, however, I was finishing up trims in an hour!

• Here are all my trims! I am soooo proud of them, especially since they all look the same!

• This is what the panel will look like, plus some gold leafing of course.

So it turns out I was right, hand carved trims ended up looking absolutely amazing. If I had bought store bought trims it just wouldn't have been right. Plus, now that I know I can carve my own detailing, I think I'll start carving as much as I can!