Year of the Patina Look

We like the "old" and neglected look to our cemetery. Although we've experimented and read up on several rust techniques for our imitation metal, this year wanted to do the look of patina on the mausoleum facade.

Four of these smaller panels run vertically up each mausoleum door with a back lit medallion in each panel.

Thanks to Victor the Undertaker, proprietor of "Halloween Hot Sauce" we got some solid "patina" guidance and gave it a try!

We created these medallions out of plastic for the doors of our mausoleum using some "Smooth-On" products from Reynold's Materials as I mentioned in an earlier blog. Cool detail but certainly in need of some color...

Step One: Spray paint your metal or in this case, imitation metal to-be,  a flat black.

If you can hang your item vertically, you'll get some pretty good results on the next step.

Step Two: Once the flat black paint is dry, select the color of your patina. Victor gave me the combination of colors he used for the effect on his project, but in the end we just chose #481 Aqua acrylic paint by Folkart. I think this is where you'll want to customize it to your taste. These parts were small so we might have wanted a different hue if the areas being painted were larger.

Didn't have a good photo of the medallions being sprayed but here's some angels!

Put your selected color in a spray bottle and add water, roughly about 5 parts water ( maybe more) to 1 part paint.  Spray your item liberally and allow it to dry. The paint is so watered down that it takes quite a few applications, allowing each layer to dry, before you start to see the color you want. I think we guessed we sprayed the medallions 6-8 times.

Step Three: Select an antique gold acrylic paint (we used Decoart Dazzling Metallics, Venetian Gold). Apply a small dot of paint to a soft cloth and gently rub the edges and or high areas of your item with the gold paint. I think we learned less is more here.

These photos don't do the coloring justice but the medallion on the left  is without any gold. The one on the right is with some gold on the edge and on the cross.