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
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!
