Hello!
Today we’re going to talk about something different, Wood Painting. Yes, These past weeks I was painting boxes, trays and even a desktop organizer made in MDF. You know, MDF is ugly, really dull but cheap and pretty sturdy, so a good choice to use for small pieces or things with no heavy use. It’s better than cardboard if you are going to take the box around. So I found this shop in Buenos Aires that has everything you want in MDF and bought a couple of things to start practicing.
The first thing I bought was a tray about 16x34cm (6,25×13,25in) for my pencils but found that they are longer so I had to come back to the store and buy these boxes of 20x30x6 cm (8x12x2,25 in) and they are perfect. Meanwhile my mother wants some pencil-cases for her shop so, i have more practice!!
Here are the before photos:
And here are some photos of the painted boxes and the organizers
Both were painted with acrylic base, one Pink and the other White and violet. For the name and the doodle i used kurecolor black and purple marker, they have alcohol ink and then I used satin varnish to protect the pieces.
Also I painted a doll house for a little girl (friend’s Daughter) called Lucia, It was her 8th birthday and I wanted it to be special, so here is a photo of the finished house with furniture (also painted).
She loves it. The interior is Bubble gum pink and the exterior is violet. Her favorites colors. I also made a mattress for the bed and a comforter, both violet. Later I gave her a cradle for her baby doll.
What else…. I painted a lot of boxes and cookies boxes and boxes for bags and so on….
After you paint your box, dolls house, or whatever you have to protect it with varnish, there are three types of varnish: mate, satin and bright. I use satin and bright, they give a really nice finish to the piece and make the color pop!. I noticed that the varnished pieces tended to stuck each other and i had to use force to separate them. The tip I learn to avoid this is to use wax (the typical floor wax or neutral wax) and voila! they never again glued together. I used this trick with both varnish and worked perfectly. You have to be careful and not put a great excess of wax on the piece. The floor wax has odor but It fades in a day or two.
Other trick you must to know is that the layers of acrylic and varnish have they own thickness. So when you are painting moving parts that must fit together take in account this. For example, when painting a box with slicing top you have to make sure that the top still fit after painting and varnish. You have to sand the edges to accommodate the extra thickness.
One thing that is important when you are painting with any type of acrylic is that the acrylics mix very well when wet but they are really bad covering other colors. So avoid spots all you can and be very fussy about your place and take all the time it need to finish one color before start the next one. Also the brushes are very sensitive to the acrylic so you must clean them right after use. Have in mind that acrylics are water soluble while wet but very water resistant once they dry. They also tend to dry fast, you can retard this with the use of varnish or medium, bt be careful because they also dilute the pigments in the acrylic and maybe you end needing more layers to obtain the same tone and opacity.
Next time I’ll show you the biggest project I made this past month in mdf. I (with my husband and Damian help) textured and paint Damian’s Fort. It was really funny to do and the results worth the time invested. Photos soon.
See you soon!
Ewa