Metallic wax painting

[Tammy Johnson]

Hi there,

Has anyone heard of Metallic Wax Painting. It's a faux finish that is supposed to look a little like texured metal. I'd like to paint a wall.

I know that you layer paint and wax and paint and wax.. but I need more specifics. What type of wax? What type of tools etc...

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Annette]

i haven't heard of it, but i'm interested in knowing how you get paint to stick to wax! anyone else? where'd you hear about or see this?

i would think you could do a venetian plaster technique and simply use the metallic paint in place of regular paint. the wax is the final step in that process.

[VPlasterman]

There are several ways to produce an "Encaustic" wax finish.
Decorative artist generally will use a base of Venetian plaster, followed by
one or more layers of wax.
To produce a metallic wax finish, you will need to mix mica's into your wax.
These are applied with a spatula or trowel, removing as much as possible with the spatula edge. Therefore your knife edge will need to be "conditioned" like you would a fine kitchen knife. (If you don't the trowel will leave very ugly scratches).
Caution: If you put to much mica into your wax, at night the heavier spots will show up like dark spots. To avoid this us a smaller amount of mica in your mix.
If you need more metallic effect, simply apply more layers of your mica/wax.
More caution:
Wax over paint=good
Wax over Venetian plaster=great
Melted wax over any finish=fantastic ... a highly trained artist would attempt this.
Paint over wax=disaster

IF you need more info or assistance let me know.
Hope this helps!
Eli

[Tammy Johnson]

Thanks for your response. I have done some simple faux paiting in the past but this sounds a bit too difficult for me. Do you know if there might be a step by step tutorial on the net somewhere? OR even better, might you have an easier suggestion for me to get that rusty metal type textured look? The wax sounds like such a hassle.

We have dark granite countertops in our kitchen that come up about 3-4 inches on the wall (as a small backsplash) we want to either tile the rest of the wall (to cover the whole back splash area) or do some type of neat faux painting there. I love the look of the rusty slate. We want something DIFFERENT!

Thanks in advance!

Tammy