Faux Marble by Evan Dahlke
Faux Marble
Faux Marbling Creates Drama
Our expert faux artists create drama with faux marble. If you want to try creating a focal point in a flip or you own home, read on. If you'd rather hire a professional, click on the image of their work to visit the artist's website.
Marbling, sometimes called marbleizing, can make any surface appear more elegant and luxurious. Faux marbling can be used in an incredible variety of applications, and though it can be time-consuming, the artistry involved appeals to many people, and the results can be truly stunning.
At its most basic level, marbling involves layering a number of tinted glazes over a base coat, whether its white or some other color. Here's how it works.
Faux by Kari Barron
After you've laid down your base coat and let it dry, you're ready to dab on your first coat of glaze with a damp sponge or brush. Cover the entire area, but not to the point where none of the base coat shows through. When you've finished, let that coat dry completely. don't overload your sponge or brush, and if you get too much on the surface, carefully blot it off.
You'll apply your second coat in the same way you did the first one, although you'll want to mottle this coat somewhat with either a sponge or crumpled plastic. you're laying down the basis for the final marbling effects here, so take your time to give your creation a sense of depth and elegance.
After that coat dries, you can begin adding veins, using an artist's brush. You can also use a feather or a combination of the two in order to create a varied look. Drag or push your brush and/or feather across the mottled surface, but don't get too uniform, since you're striving for realism, and real marble is anything but symmetric. Some veins should be long, some short, and none of them perfectly straight. You can achieve some nice effects by twisting the brush between your thumb and fingers as you move across the surface.
The next step is to add fine veins, which will be smaller than the first set of veins you added in the previous step. To achieve a realistic effect, make your veins across the marbled surface, shifting your veins slightly up or down each time they cross over a larger vein.
Faux Fireplace by Kim Schaffer
The last marbling step involves taking either a feature or artist's brush and adding white highlights or crystalline marks inside your wider veins. This will give the veins a very nice three-dimensional look and greatly add to the overall realism.
Finally, you'll want to protect your newly created work of art, so apply a top coat of clear finish or shellac after your white highlight coat has dried completely. This will give the entire creation the look of beautifully polished marble.
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Copyright © 2007 Jeanette J. Fisher
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