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Faux Marble Counter Tops (cont'd) |
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You can learn to appreciate the natural beauty of real marble that took thousands of years to evolve.
- Study the color combinations; how one color blends gently with another to create a third color
- Study how the lines of color fracture away from each other
- Observe how the colors seem to become transparent here and there, appear and seem to disappear beneath the surface
It is your understanding of how marble evolved that is going to help you create a very realistic faux marble that may be applied to more than countertops.
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The Creation of Natural Marble
Marbles are smooth, close-grained, compact, crystalline calcium carbonate, mostly made up of limestone. The calcium carbonate came from –millions of years ago - tiny shells and bones of water animals. When the creatures died, their bones were crushed by the ocean waves and formed a shell sand limestone. Over time, this limestone crystallized and became marble.
Magma – hot gasses and liquids from the center of the earth - forced immense pressure on the mineral layers causing them to shift and fragment creating new formations, colors and lines in the
rock layers.
Tremendous heat often melted the layers, causing once defined colors to become fused with others and some were even lost forever. As earth shifts occurred, other rock formations were carried along with the marble adding new dimension. Therefore, marbles from around the world tell a great story and educate us in many ways.
Believe it or not, marble is drab in its natural state and has to be highly polished to accentuate its beauty that lies beneath.
Now that you know, albeit brief, how marble was formed, you should have a better understanding of how veining should look. (Keep in mind that veining is random in design and when rendered correctly, the results are amazingly realistic.) |
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Tips for creating realistic faux marble counter tops
The DVD demonstration of how to create a faux marble countertop is very enlightening. It is always an advantage to see how a professional works and learn quickly and easily what constitutes a great faux marble.
Though faux finishing has been around for hundreds of years, there has been a surge in its popularity in the past decade. The market has become flooded with all kinds of equipment to “ensure” the perfect look. It is worth investing in good brushes if you intend to faux finish on a regular basis. |
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However, for a one-off project such as paint a faux finish kitchen counter, you do not need to spend $30-$50 on one brush for creating veining.
In the DVD kit, you are supplied with a shopping list of all the materials you need and where you can buy them.
NOTE: To ensure durability of your faux finish counter tops, use the paint products recommended. For any painting project, always use the best quality
paints available. |
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As mentioned earlier, you must study a piece of marble to learn how it is “layered” and visualize the colors and veins as layers. You are going to be blending colored glazes in layers to simulate the effect and give your faux marble depth. (Imagine marble as the transparent layers of an onion. You may see a little of one vein through the next with the surface layers having most definition.) Thick ‘zebra’ stripes of color, all moving in the same direction across the counter look flat and are not appealing so you must blend colors gently together. Create ragged lines of varied thicknesses and develop your
direction pattern.
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Avoid working veins into, out of, or across corners. These areas are too obvious and a painter tends to work toward a corner. Remember, diagonal lines are considered moving lines and will lead your eye in a certain direction so work diagonals in a similar direction around your countertop.
When veining, step back and look at your work regularly. Squint at it to see if one area is more defined than another is. Look for definite shapes in the veining, e.g. squares, triangles, zigzags. Those have to be blended out.
Note: Mistakes can always be corrected.
Imagine the countertop is a piece of cut marble. A vein or mass of color will run off the edge of the counter if it has been cut through. It will not taper and disappear before the edge; it would have carried on through the rest of the stone. Similarly, a back splash and the counter top would be two separate pieces of marble, so a vein would not travel across the counter and up the back splash. |
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You must end the line at the joint and start a fresh veining thread somewhere else. You will gain a better understanding after watching the DVD demonstration.
The final layer of veins is generally created with a fine brush, though some people like to use a feather. (Visit a craft store to see what available or check on line
http://about.com/od/frugaldecorator/
Decorating_on_a_Budget.htm)
These veins are the final touch and really bring your faux marble alive. Though they look great, do not get carried away. To make them look realistic, you must make them look ‘embedded’ in the marble, so do not forget to soften them with a rag or soft bristled brush here and there.
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TIP: Faux finishes for kitchen and bathroom countertops are easy to complete when you have watched the Countertop Transfauxmations DVD and you understand the process. It is recommended, however, that before you move on to the third step, applying the marble faux finish, you practice your technique on a couple of pieces of poster board. It is important that you are comfortable with your technique and you achieve the desired look before you start |
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