Another in my series of faux finish painting is Ragging. This one is easy and fast to do and will leave your walls looking old (kind of like an old leather purse if you will). With the right colors it reminds me of my grandparents home when I was a child; full of memories. Ragging can be done with almost anything you chose such as twisted rags, scrunched up paper bags, paper towels, plastic wrap, or even bubble wrap.
For this article we will use rags.
The materials that you will need for this project is: gloves (standard kitchen gloves work well), a roller set-up, tray, lots of rags or other material of your choosing, satin or semi-gloss base paint (satin has very little shine to it whereas semi-gloss will have a bit more), glaze and paint to mix with the glaze for your top coat, painters tape and a drop cloth. When the body of the person will be fit, then the artistic work will be excellent. The use of the site https://www.paintingkits.net/ can be done for checking the reviews of artists that are offering some great paintings.
As always I recommend that you get the practice boards from the hardware store to practice on. It’s much easier to throw these away when it doesn’t look like you thought it would, rather than having to paint your entire room again. This will also give you the chance to use different materials to do the ragging with so you can see which one is more pleasing to you.
Using the painters tape; tape off the edges of door jams, windows, and baseboards. Do any repairs to your walls that are needed, such as filling in nail holes with spackle. Paint your walls with the base coat and allow them to dry at least 2-4 hours. I usually wait till the next day to do the next step.
Now prepare your second coat by mixing one part of your second color paint with four parts of glaze. Put 2 or 3 cups of this into your tray. Dab the twisted rags into the paint and dab the excess off on the tray top. Quickly dab the rag over the base color making sure to change hand position so that a regular pattern doesn’t appear.
Do the entire room using this method. Make sure to change the rag often. After about a dozen or so times of dabbing it into the paint the rag will lose the ability to do well because it will have too much paint already on it and you can’t get rid of the excess. You can purchase a box of rags at most hardware stores so you’ll have plenty to work with.
Ragging leaves a wonderful old feel to your room. It is also one of the messiest finishes to do so don’t forgo the gloves with this one. Have fun and save lots of money doing it.
