Creating a Verdigris Faux Finish on Pressed Tin Tile

Posted by LIz

Part of moving to a new, albeit 100 year old house, is figuring out what existing furniture will work in the new setting. With our recent move, I have been ‘fine tuning’ some of those pieces even a little more… and creating a new verdigris faux finish on the antique tin tile was breathing new life and a new purpose into an existing piece from our former house. Here’s why and how I did this verdigris faux finish…

Let me go back a moment, to our former house…

The antique tin tile that I’m going to show you how to create a faux finish on, is this ‘headboard’.

I had picked it up at an occasional sale several years ago and spray painted the tin tile part with this Rustoleum bronze spray paint, and the wooden frame with just brown latex paint.

It was a cute, quick and inexpensive headboard treatment for one of the spare rooms in our former house. (You can read more about that bedroom here, but be forewarned… it was when I was first learning how to use my camera and blog, so it is a bit of a primitive post… hahaha… I’ll probably have that same thought in a couple more years looking back at this post!)

But times have changed since that, I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at taking pictures and blogging, 😉 but also, our house and use of our house has changed…

In our new house, we decided to focus one of the bedrooms more geared to a youthful approach. Since it is a grandchild that is most likely to have a sleepover, it makes sense to have at least one room decorated to suit their tastes. And the antique tin tile would be a wonderful piece for them to use for their artwork and favorite comics they snip out of the Sunday paper.

But the dark brown paint was just too dull for the new theme

So here’s what we did…

Gathered some latex paints we had… Sky Blue Aqua, Bright Olive Green, Fushia Pink, and White for the frame. (in fact all these paints were from Home Depot for a project last summer… and were in the small 8 ounce sized ‘sample’ pots they sell… it’s a fantastic deal!!)

Starting with the aqua color, which is the majority of the color on the bronze, I added about 1 part paint to 1 part water, mixed together and very lightly and quickly brushed it on the tile.

Actually, my granddaughter brushed it on… and I wiped some of it off, being sure that some of the brown showed through. We were working outside on a warm day in the sun, so the watered down paint dried super fast.

This is a very forgiving treatment though, if you do wind up with too much aqua on the tile, you can just dampen a rag and wipe it off. Also, since we were going to paint the frame after we were done with the verdigris treatment, there was no worries about getting the paint slopped on it either.

Then once the aqua was completely dry, it was time for the next color…

Hot Fushia Pink!

For the pink though, we didn’t use the brush, we just wanted highlights, so we used our fingers and dabbed it here and there.

I just kept re-using the same little tray, (actually a lid from take out salad we had for lunch 😉 ) Once the blue was dry, adding the pink wasn’t a problem.

And as you can see, this takes just a tiny amount of paint, really just a small drop.

Once the pink was dry, time for the final color…

Can you see it? it’s a bright lime/olive green. Again, we just dabbed the thinned out paint here and there with our fingers.

That’s it! It does have a sort of verdigris finish to it…

So easy, and I love the results!!

Oh and the frame.

I quickly painted a single coat of white latex paint on it, let it completely dry, and lightly sanded it to distress it.

The colors look great with the pinks and aquas in the room.

and it looks great for the wall treatment behind the little desk area we’ve created in the room.

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