Hey everyone!
I hope you all are having a good week! Today, I want to share an “acrylic paint pour” on Furniture! This technique has become really popular on canvas, but I paint furniture and decided to give it a try on a set of 3 nesting tables. You’ve probably seen videos of “dirty pour” projects using acrylic paint mixed with some type of fluid medium. I’ve got my own video over on my facebook page showing how I did a “puddle pour” on 3 small nesting tables. It also includes how I prepped the tables before I painted. You can watch that here.
Since that video, I decided to finish the table tops with resin. You can watch that here.
I’ve listed a few affiliate links in the Supply List below if you’d like to get the supplies and try this yourself! There’s no difference in cost for you; I’ll just get a few cents if you purchase through my link and possible be able to buy a cup of coffee! 🙂
SUPPLY LIST:
- Furniture Piece
- Spray Shellac
- Primer
- Orbital sander
- Sand Paper
- Polycrylic sealer
- Acrylic Paints in black, gold & white
- Pouring Medium
- Plastic cups
- Disposable Gloves
- Plastic Sheeting
- Resin (optional)
Here’s how the tables looked “before:” I had 3 of them at varying heights.
STEP 1:
The first thing I did was to remove the legs from the table top and prime them with Rustoleum spray primer.
Once that dried, I lightly sanded them using a 220 grit sanding sheet and painted them gold using Modern Masters in warm silver (which is really a light gold). It’s a very pretty gold; not so brassy.
After the gold paint dried, I sealed it with minwax polycrylic. I found it easier to just use my fingers to apply this sealer.
STEP 2:
Now it’s time for the tops! The fun part! Well, not quite…there’s a little prep work that I had to do before! This step is not fun, but totally worth it! I’ve learned the hard way, especially when it comes to using shellac on dark wood stains to prevent tannins from the wood bleeding through the paint.
I first cleaned each top really well using a mixture of tsp and water. I then sanded them using my orbital sander.
I thought the stain that was on there would sand off pretty easily, but it didn’t. The stain was sort of a reddish brown, so to make sure it wouldn’t bleed, I sprayed each top with a clear shellac by Zinnser.
STEP 3:
Next, I brushed on a primer. Here is the brand I used. I lightly sanded after the primer dried, and then brushed on a coat of black acrylic paint. I like to get Behr samples from Home Depot. Behr paint is acrylic and you can get a sample size around $4.
Here is the primer that I used for this project:
NOWWWWWW it’s time for the fun part! Note: The pictures used for the actual pour were taken from my live video, so the quality isn’t great! You can check out the video here!
STEP 4:
Before I do a pour, I like to put down (or pour out) a coat of my base color mixed with floetrol. Floetrol is a paint conditioner that helps with leveling. It’s also a great pouring medium. I use it in all of my acrylic pours as it helps the additional paints to “flow.” Again, you can watch the process on my Facebook page here.
STEP 5:
There are many techniques out there when it comes to “acrylic paint pours.” For this project, I used a “puddle pour” technique. I took 3 plastic cups and filled each one with 1 part of each paint color to 3 parts Floetrol. So, in my case, I had one cup of a black mixture, one cup of a white mixture, and one cup of a gold mixture. I poured 3 separate puddles, alternating the colors randomly. I continued with this until the cups were empty.
STEP 6:
Next, I tilted the top in a back-n-forth motion, moving the paint around until I got close to the look I wanted.
I also “blew” a little paint around using a straw and continued tilting the top in a circular motion to move the paint around in a swirled like fashion.
STEP 7:
I repeated steps 1 thru 6 on the other two tops and then allowed them to completely dry. Once dry, I sealed them with minwax polycrylic. You can stop here if you’d like, but I added an additional step and poured resin on each top. Resin is an epoxy that dries with a glassy look! Let’s take another look before I resined:
Now let’s see what a difference Resin makes! See the reflection? It looks like glass! I totally meant to take some staged pictures before I took these to my shop, but I got in a hurry and forgot! If you would like to do the resin, follow Step 8 below and be sure to watch my live video on this here.
STEP 8: (optional)
Resin comes in two parts…part A and part B. One is the epoxy and one is the hardener. Equal parts of A and B should be carefully mixed together, stirring for 3 minutes. You should stir slowly, scraping along the sides as you do so. Pour the resin on the piece and then spread using your hands or a rubber spatula. Again, here is a video of this here.
I watched several youtube videos when I first got hooked on acrylic paint pouring. I had many favorite artists, but I’ll list a few in case you’re interested.
Let’s look again at how my tables turned out! I like them sooo much better now!
What do you think? Have you ever used Resin before? I’d love to see anything you’ve done or get any tips that you think would be useful!
By the way, I also “paint-poured” a suitcase that turned out great! You can see that project here.
Here’s one of my first acrylic pour projects doing pumpkins! This may be what got me hooked! So fun!
Okay guys, Hope you enjoyed this! Happy creating!!
