Ceiling Medallion as Art

I love the way this ceiling medallion turned art work looks, by Green Willow Pond.  Check it out:


Okay...for my first real project post.  It's an easy one.  Here are the steps:

1. Find a badly painted foam ceiling medallion at a thrift store.
2. Buy spray paint (Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze - ORB - to be exact.)
3. Point the can at the medallion and spray - about 3 light coats.
4. Make a note next time to buy the really cheap .99 cent plain black paint for the undercoats, then use the more expensive ORB as a top coat.  (Told you I can make a penny squeal)
5. Highlight with some gold acrylic paint using a dry brush technique (I'll "splain" below).

Showing the first coat of paint.  Sorry, I forgot to take a before picture.  Trust me, it was really ugly.  I don't even think it had paint on it, just some orange looking stuff in the crevices.

Here's my painting station.  It was a windy day, so I had to hold down the plastic with rocks.  And the plastic...an old shower curtain liner.  We have rusty water which is really hard to clean off shower curtain liners, so I buy the cheap dollar store liners.  They last about a month and make great paint backdrops when I'm done with them.

Here she is with the last coat on.  Even with the beautiful ORB, she looked a little "flat" to me.  Plus I wanted to hang her next to a couple of pictures with gold highlighting on them, so I decided to dry brush some gold highlights on.

The gold paint is Decor brand that I had on hand.

To dry brush, start with a dry brush.  Now did that sound intelligent or what?  Squirt a little paint out on some newspaper and dip the tip of your brush in it.  Brush most of the paint back off on the paper.  Then very lightly brush the gold onto the raised areas of the design that you want to highlight.  Remember to use very little paint and brush very lightly.  You can always add more paint if you need to.  Keep a damp paper towel ready so if you do use too much, you can very quickly wipe it back off.  If worse comes to worst and it's already too dry to wipe, all is not lost...just spray another coat of ORB, let it dry, and start over.

Close up of highlighting.

Because this was foam, not wood, I couldn't just nail in a picture hanger.  So I used gorilla glue to glue a piece of ribbon to the back.  Hot glue might have worked, but I didn't trust it.

The finished product...well, almost.  I want to find something for the hole in the center of the medallion.  I thought a neat vintage pin might work.  I'll keep my eyes peeled.

I love the way she highlighted the features of the design!  Great Job!