Dare you to DIY!

I am moderately crafty.  Add kids into the mix and I am zero crafty.  BUT, if there is a swing set and playground, well...I can squeak out some crafty.

The stark white gallery picture frames I had on my stairway wall were bothering me.  They were too uniform.  So I took to pinterest and did some pinsearch to find the best way to distress these frames.


After a few different attempts, I ultimately ended up doing this...

Step One:
Sand down the current frames (I ambitiously tried to do this by hand but surrendered to power tools when I realized it would take WAY too long to do all of them.  I used a power sander and was done in 20 mins!).

Before

After

I actually sort of like the simply sanded look, to be honest.  But I had already purchased spray paint and really just wanted to try and use it!


Step Two:
Apply vaseline on a few areas of the sanded frame- this protects those areas from spray paint so you can wipe away the color to give it a more distressed look.

Step Three:
I did one layer of a teakey teal color- Catalina Mist

Step Four:
And the next layer was a Metallic Gold

Step Five:
I allowed the paint to dry for two hours before taking a damp paper towel and vigorously wiping away the areas that had the vaseline on them.  Note the varying degrees of "distress".  The more vaseline the more "chipping".

Very little distressing

Moderate Distressing

 Very Distressed 

FINAL LOOK:  Clearly we are missing the pictures but overall I like this look much more than the plain, uniform white I had going on before- I might even leave some frames empty....  Need to add a few more goodies to my gallery wall.  Next stop, ETSY!