5 Painting Techniques That Transform Flat Wood into Art

What is up, welcome back. We know you love to do it, build it and make it. And we're here to help you sell it. Last week, we showed you our speed to market workflow for painting and assembling our 3D door hangers. This week, we're gonna show you how to take them to the whole other level and beat out the competition. We've got five paint techniques that really make your signs pop. We got a little ombre sunset that you can see here in the five o'clock somewhere. We've got some wood grain to make your fences or boardwalks look real. We're gonna do some blotting with a paper towel to show you how to make some foliage or a bush. And then we're gonna do some distressing. We're gonna use a little bit of sandpaper and a little bit of chapstick. Let's get into it right now. What was that? Paint technique number two is paint layering. So we've already painted this sign. This is a boxwood wreath on a striped backer. We've already assembled everything but the boxwood wreath. Now let's show you how we can bring that boxwood to life. Yeah, it's really hard to tell. It's a wreath looking like this. First things first, I'm gonna give it a base color of green. I'm gonna start with my lightest green. Then I'm just gonna give it a sloppy little first coat. Just basically to cover the MDF. This is our apple red green. This is the bright limey green. Just going around the edge. Now I'm not even gonna wait for this thing to dry. And I'm gonna come right in with the other colors. The next step, we're gonna use some paper towels. We have a base coat of that lime green on here, the apple red. We're gonna take a paper towel and then a palette of different types of greens. We have some dark greens and back around the light green. Yep, light, medium, dark. I'm gonna give my paper towel a good crinkle. It's just so it has a textured look to it. Just gonna come in at the green, give it a couple of dabs. Dab it off to see what kind of pattern I'm getting. And I'm just gonna bring it around the side. Kind of random. And I'm really not trying to give it any kind of look. I'm just dropping my hand every couple of inches or so. Dabbing around. Just trying to break up that lime green. I'm not trying to smooth it out. I'm trying to keep that pattern look to it. I'm gonna take another paper towel and I'm gonna crinkle it up again. Try to get a different pattern. Dip it in my darker green. Dab it off. This one is olive orchard. So it's got kind of an olive-y color to it. And this is giving you different shades. So your boxwood would have different shadows. They would have new leaves, which would be lime green. It would have shadows from other leaves, which would be darker greens. So that's why you want multiple colors and shades of green here. And we're just coming around. I'm breaking up that other green a little bit more. Break it up, go this way. All right, look how quickly that's looking like a bush. That's what I'm talking about. Now I'm gonna come in with that green green. Let me fold my paper towel back around the other way. I'm gonna come in with this green green right here. This one's called mole's meadow. And this is a really bright green. Okay, come down the middle and stuff. Do it again, just coming around. I'm not trying to do any blending. Trying to keep the splotches splotchy. All right, what do you think? It gets addictive. Once you start, you can't stop. It's hard. All right, I might come back in with a little bit of that. I like this one. Oh, that darker one? Mm-hmm. For me, I think. I'm gonna fold it and try to pick up both. And then here, try to knock that green green down just a little bit. All right. I mean, I think that came together pretty quick. Great. New little green green right in here, break that guy up. Break him up, break him up. All right, I'm happy with that. That came together quick. Like two, three minutes, you got yourself a bush. Yeah, you see the dimension in this. So now your eye is gonna look all the way around because it's just gonna see all the different colors in this. Paint technique number three. We have our five o'clock somewhere sign here. And what this needs is a beautiful sunset. So we're gonna show you how to ombre the colors in the back for a beautiful sunset. Now you can use this paint blending technique on any kind of blending of some colors. It's great if you can keep them somewhat similar shades like we're doing here with different shades of yellow and orange. And we're gonna blend these together. So we're gonna start by painting the whole sunset back here with a little of our apple stars. This is our darkest yellow. Now Garrett doesn't have to paint the whole backer here because this is gonna be covered with other layers of MDF. So he's only gonna paint the part that we'll be showing. Now we're gonna quickly dry this and put a second coat on here as well. Now this second coat is gonna give you an even color as well as additional protection on your sign if you're gonna hang this outdoors. Now we're gonna go ahead and add a third coat on this one because it's a yellow. So what we typically do or with any yellow, you'll wanna use a primer and then the base coat. In this case, because we're doing a sunset, we're just going in with three coats of the same color yellow just to make sure that the pigment is nice and even and consistent. There you go, that third coat did it. Now that we have our base coat of yellow on, we're gonna start our blending process. This is dry to the touch and we're gonna add the Foxy Fire, the darker color on the outside and then we're gonna come back with the medium color in the middle. I'm just gonna roll it around, not putting any pressure down. Just again, letting the tool do the work. It's hitting the edge. No pressure, no pressure, no pressure. That's it, that's all we need. All right, now we're coming in with the next, well, let me give this a quick dry. I don't want them to blend too much to their mix. Now, this is the medium orange and this is Wildfire Whisker. We're gonna try to get a pretty porous roller. So relatively dry. Pretty dry. I'm just gonna run around that edge. Again, not a whole lot of pressure. Just letting the tool do the work. Work my way inwards a little bit. No pressure, no pressure. All right, what do you think, Kim? Gently working over top. All right, there you go. What do you think? I think we're gonna have to do a little more blending in here and maybe this is where I wanna show you that you can add a little spritz of water to do some blending. Or like Garrett has here, a dry brush does a great job at that. No, we can use the thing. I'm gonna do another little trick then. I'm gonna come back in with the orange. I'm just gonna make it a little bit wet. Come back in gently over the top. Not trying to pick up any of the other color. We'll give it a spritz. Over to your right, there you go. Give a spritz with a little bit of water. Back to my paper towel. I'll spritz this up too. Make it nice and damp. Now I could come in little circles. There you go. Kind of blend that out. Let me show you that close up. Just a little damp little circles. Really blends that in. There we go. Little bit of water fixes anything. Paint technique number four, wood grain. We have our wintry pine cone, pine tree sign here and it has this great cavity feel to it. But what it really needs is a wood grain banner across the center. So we're gonna show you how to do that right now. The wood grain might be the fastest of all of these little tips and tricks today. But it has one of the biggest punches. It really does add some interest and some dimension. Now you're gonna use two colors for wood graining. You're gonna do either your, you can do either a light coat or a darker coat on the bottom but then you're gonna do the opposite on top. So we're gonna do a black for the base coat on the bottom here. We're just gonna do one thin coat because we're gonna come back with another coat on top. I'll dry this real quick with the hairdryer. Now this is gonna go fast. This is gonna be super fast. So we're gonna lay down this brown color. This, what's this color? This one's pine cone path. Pine cone path. We're gonna lay it down and immediately come in with this wood graining tool. It's just got a bunch of circles, inside circles, inside circles. We're gonna put the small circles at the bottom. So I'm just gonna lay down a quick paint of some pine cone path. We're gonna cover the whole thing. We got everything covered. Well, it's still wet. Tiny circles are down. I'm just gonna drag across and rock my wrist, right? And as I rock my wrist, it's gonna create some knots, but I'm gonna do a slow controlled pull and rock. I'm gonna start at the very top. Just slow rocking and pulling at the same time. Rock and pull. Bam. That's it. Did you miss it? Cause we already have some wood grain. Paint technique number five, chippy paint. We love a little rustic look to some of our items. So we're gonna put a little rustic look on the back of this door hanger. This is our baby, it's cold outside door hanger. This is also great for things like ornaments and tags. You can use this technique on lots of things to give it a distressed look. Again, another fast technique. Just gonna slide that off anywhere. Just sliding it off. I should have done the mm. Yeah, like pulling the tablecloth. So we're using some clear wax here. This is our Annie Sloan clear wax. That was hard to say, but you can use any clear wax. You can also use a little Vaseline, but I think I like the wax a little better than I do the Vaseline. Some lip balm. Oh, you have used Chapstick. I have seen him do that during a workshop when we couldn't find the wax, he just went and got his Chapstick. Just wherever I'm putting the wax, that's where the paint will not stick. So what we're gonna do is just apply wax in random spots all over this board. Oh, I neglected to mention, we have stained this backer. So this is actually wood stain. Like you would put on, he's just gonna keep going. Like you would put on any type of pine wood, oak wood, any kind of stain, you can actually apply that to MDF. We did this yesterday, so it would be nice and dry today. You really don't need to wait that long. In a workshop, we will apply the stain, move on, paint the top pieces, and then it's ready to go for this technique here for applying the wax. What do you think? Need more chip? Yeah, I think you need to do a little throughout, yes. Some chips in here? Mm-hmm. And then what we're gonna do is actually paint right over this wax. Chip it up right there. Chip, chip. Here's a chip, there's a chip. Chip. Any more chipping? No, that's a big chunk of chip. Big chunk of chip. All right, and as you can see, he's got lots of different thicknesses here. Some of it is very thick, and it's definitely not gonna get paint through there. Some of it's a little thinner, and you'll see some of the paint, but not all of the paint. So let's show you how this is gonna go. Now, disregard everything from the first segments. I'm gonna want a heavy, sloppy roller here. I wanna be able to paint over the wax without picking up the wax. You know, the bad part about this one is you can't dry it with the hairdryer. Why? You'll melt the wax. Now, we're gonna have to let this dry, and like he said, you cannot use the hairdryer on this because it will just melt the wax. So we're just gonna need to let this dry for a few minutes. If you get paint in your shiplap grooves or score marks here, you can use a little sharp tool and just run down the score mark and pull it right back out. Now that our paint is dry, we're gonna wipe off the areas where there's wax and reveal the stain underneath. I think that's about as chipped as we can chip it. Well, and here, so this is a super distressed look. Now, what you can do is come back with a dry brush just to give like a, like it's been multi-layers of paint over ages. So that's another, let's take that brush. Don't add any paint to it. This one? Mm-hmm. And make sure, let me see how much is on there. Let me watch you. Yeah, that's good. Now let's just give it a little coat over top. Like this? Mm-hmm. There you go. That's what I'm looking for. Mm-hmm. There you go. Well, kind of. It's on the wrist. Yeah. Just want to dull some of these spots down. Yeah, I like the way that's looking. All right. Now we've added a little, just a little dry roller of thin. Looks a little more natural. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like natural wear. Now we've shown you how to assemble a sign and really add those 3D layers to make your signs pop. But being able to add a few extra paint techniques will take your signs to the next level to really beat out the competition. I mean, and how easy were those paint techniques? A paper towel will give you a bush. That's crazy. A little wood grain tool will really add some dimension. Oh, I'm not even holding the right sign. Wood grain tool will give some dimension to a fence post here, so it's just not a flat color. I mean, and how easy is that wood grain tool? It's one of our favorites. At the workshops, I love to unlock minds and show them that they can do the wood grain tool. And every single sign, every person is like, I just unlocked pro level. And being able to add a sunset and do the transition from a dark orange to a yellow really gives it that sunset feel and takes this five o'clock somewhere sign and elevates it to that $65 level. I mean, they don't look flat. Now they kind of look rounded out. They look real. They don't look like layers of wood stacked on top of each other. It looks like a cohesive aged sign. Piece of artwork. You know, we were at an art show and someone told us once, I love your art. And I said, that's how we think of it. It is our art. And he said, truly, these are a work of art. And I was like, thanks, man. They are a work of art. And you know what else is a work of art? Our Make It Mafia family. That is the best work of art I ever did see. Over there in our membership area, we have extra files. We have after shows. We have Zoom calls, but it's really about the community. You get to join a super secret Facebook group and a Discord. And if you have any problems or questions, the family's got you.