Fe Fi Faux Studios

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1996

Fakes Take the Cake

Paint and Courage Create Faux Finishes By Rhonda Stansberry WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

What follows is a fresh way to cover your walls. Faux - give yourself if you try any of these techniques and get less than perfect results. After all, it’s only paint. Faux, in this context, describes an ancient painting method that has been revived in recent years, creating any number of illusions - exquisite marble, precious stones, crushed velvet, watered silk, leather and wood graining. The effect is realistic. The result is a custom, one - of - a kind finish. Best of all, experts say, a faux finish is better than wallpaper. It’s seamless. It won’t peel. It doesn’t have to be removed to change wall colors or patterns. And nicks can be touched up with a dab of leftover paint. Inexpensive? That depends. One - step processes involve no more than paint, a little practice and a lot of courage. Courage is necessary if you have qualms about veering from the traditional roller - and brush approach. Courage also may be necessary to get beyond the stigma of drawing and painting free - hand on the wall. Some projects are probably better left to the pros, who know

RHONDA STANSBERRY THE WORLD-HERALD

LEAPIN’ LIZARDS: Sage Lassley’s bedroom carries a Southwestern motif through stencil and spatter-paint techniques.

all the tricks and move with confidence around the room. The murals, portraits and other complex subjects are almost always pro territory. In either case, specialists in faux finishes say, the painting possibilities are unlimited, and require the simplest, most basic tools. Rags, paper and plastic bags, feathers, pencil eraser tips and sponges are among the common household objects used to create patterns in paint and glazes. Techniques include ragging, dragging, sponging, stenciling, marbleizing, crackling, stippling, skim - coating and color brushing. In addition, texture to mimic an Old World finish can be created by gluing paper to the wall or by troweling on a coat of gesso or spackling compound before glazing. Glazing - not to be confused with decoupage - creates the faux finish. In glazing, said Matt Jones, “you’re putting a transparent color on a transparent color. Transparent paint with color added is glazing, and the more times you apply the glaze, the more depth you achieve.” Finishes evolve, Jones said. The base color will seem too strong, but a glaze or multiple glazes will calm down the color. Jones, one of the leaders in faux finishes in the Omaha Council Bluffs metropolitan area, said the art is typically revived at the end of every century. He first studied the techniques 10 years ago with master faux - finisher Joanne Day of San Francisco and New York City. The process was new in the Omaha area then and Jones began to try his skills with furniture pieces at Nebraska Furniture Mart, where he was working in 1986. Over time, he progressed to wall - size portraits, murals and trompe l’oeil, or “fool the eye” paintings, so realistic that the viewer may not be sure whether the object is real or representative. Creating marble and semiprecious stone finishes are examples of the work that Maggie Prosser, an Omaha artist and now Jones’ fiancee, learned by taking one of Jones’ classes. As an end - of - class project, she created a realistic surface of in-

RHONDA STANSBERRY/THE WORLD-HERALD

SERPENTINE COLUMNS: Sandra Lassley gave PVC pipes supporting a bookcase the look of a veiny dark green marble. lays - various marbles around a centerpiece of deep blue lapis lazuli - on a 2 - by - 2 - foot Masonite board. Faux finishes can be applied to “anything that can be painted,” Jones said. And if Ms. Prosser’s Masonite board is one example, Sandra Lassley’s PVC pipe is another. A pair of columns supporting bookshelves made by Mrs. Lassley’s husband, Jeff, are the type of plastic pipe commonly used in plumbing, but they now have a dark green serpentine marble finish. The columns are one of many faux finishes Mrs. Lassley has chosen for her Omaha home. There are stenciled lizards and spatter painting on son Sage’s bedroom wall. Teen - age Sasha, who works with her mother one day a week in the home - based Fe Fi Faux painting business, has a bedroom wall of wide rag - rolled stripes in deep purple and green. In the master bedroom, Mrs. Lassley added a leatherlike tex-

REPRINTED FROM THE OMAHA WORLD-HERALD

ture to the walls by gluing tissue paper to the wall and covering it with a color glaze. Kelly King of Faux Effects said the technique people assume is most diffi - cult - marbleizing - can be one of the easiest, requiring tools such as a pencil eraser to create veins and the torn edge of a paper bag to create drift lines in the surrounding “stone.” “Marbling has a lot of tricks,” King said, “and the do - it - yourselfer can do it.” As Matt Jones said, “It’s only paint.”

MARBLE: Charcoal was used to create the veins in this wall panel