Quickly slathering the trunk with Annie Sloan's chalk pain in 'Antique White', I plugged in my blow dryer as if it were a magic wand and I was the furniture refinishing fair godmother. As I stood kneeling over the trunk like a crazed-crafter, Brett looked on with a raised eyebrow. While the dryer did help the paint dry quickly, it was not crackling. For shame! My crackled imaginary paradise was crumbling to dust...
My husband, who is not high on the thought of crackle paint, suggests with clarity that I might need to make sure it is a thick coat. Sure enough, I looked back at the instructions where it clearly indicates you need a really thick coat. Blast! I had just covered the entire piece...
In attempt to make one small crack in the paint, I brushed on what I thought was a thick coat to the top surface of the lid. In the end, only one spot ended up being thick enough. As I hovered the blow dryer over the unit, my eyes nearly bugged out of my head when a small crack developed in the center of the thickest brush stroke.
"It's crackling, it's crackling!" I shouted with elated glee. Brett looked on in utter amusement as I attempted to add more breaks in the paint. Now removed from the situation, I can understand how bonkers I must look when I get hearts in my eyes over crackled paint. Memo to self, scale the hearts in eyes look back a bit when walking in public antique stores...
After 10 minutes of blow drying in circles, I have a 1 inch x 3 inch spot on the top cover that has a thick enough coat to 'crackle'. On to plan B, I absolutely gobbed on some white paint to a frame that needed some love. Instead of using the heat from the dryer, the tutorial also suggested I could place the piece in the sun and let nature do the work.
This morning before work in the darkness of my dining room, I propped the frame up against the southern facing window in hopes that I would come home to a frame that looked like it had been drying up in a barn for 50 years. To my dismay, my hubby's judgement that it would take some hot summer sun to make this happen, was correct. Come on summer - I need you here to crackle my paint!
With Plan B falling apart before me, Plan C popped into my brain. Actually, it was my left shoulder angel telling me to put the frame in the oven. However, my right shoulder angel interrupted and declared that was a sure way to burn down the house. I also found myself thinking of creative ways to get a trunk on wheels in the oven...
What do you think - could the oven work for drying the paint out enough to crack it?
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