It’s Just Paint! Moroccan Table Re-Paint

Moroccan Table with Raised Stencils

Sometimes your style changes. Sometimes you get new ideas. Sometimes you think, I wish that looked different.

Sometimes this happens to me … with things I painted!

I painted this table with Moroccan patterns years ago and it was loved.

Moroccan Table Painted with Stencils

Hard to see in the photo, but the white lines were shimmery pearlescent. With pink, blue and green veins like mother of pearl inlay. If you want to learn how to paint that, visit my tutorial at Paint + Pattern.

We lived with this look for about four years. Then one summer evening, while blasting Queen music probably a little too loud for the neighbors’ liking, I did a “messy metallic” look on candlesticks. I mixed golds, bronzes, coppers, silvers, and made them look burnished and old. This was originally a white farmhouse style candlestick:

Messy Metallic Painted Candlestick

I loved this look. This might not be everyone’s favorite look, but it’s right up my design alley. I wanted to do messy metallics on MORE and BIGGER.

That’s when I got the idea.

I could see the Moroccan table with raised patterns, and messy metallic. I wanted it to look like a bronze table cast with lost wax technique in a sandpit somewhere deep in the Sahara Desert. Maybe the table was made many decades ago, and since then the table sat in a flood for awhile, so patina is darker on the bottom. Or maybe it sat too close to a road, and grease gradually built up on the bottom of it. Dust settled in the crevices between the raised patterns. Edges of the patterns got brighter as hands brushed them and books, tea cups and dishes were dragged over them.

Maybe you’d call that a wild imagination. Or a hallucination! But when painting, I’m going for an idea, a feeling, a memory of a place. I wanted this table to travel further back in time and through rough stuff in its life.

Before showing the paint steps, I want to say first … about the roadside grease … no we wouldn’t really want grease on our furniture. Right? We wouldn’t really want mold on a table in our living room. We might not want horribly chipping paint all over the outside walls of our house.

So, isn’t it funny that so many of us — me included — take pictures in front of things like this when we’re on vacation? Like chippy walls with dirt, grease, and frankly, likely mold, is worthy of photos. We call it patina. “Aged to perfection.”

But when the “dirt” or “grease” is just paint, it’s fine in the house.

STEPS TO DO THIS

After that way-too-long intro (but I’m not cutting it down), here are a few tips to get this look …

Raised Stencils

I used the same stencil as the first time the table was painted — Starry Moroccan Night from Royal Design Studio. I did not want to buy new supplies, so I used what I already owned to make raised patterns. I used a Golden molding paste on the top. That ran out. So on the sides, I used Modern Masters Venetian plaster. After the paste & plaster dried, a light sanding knocked off sharp peaks and sharp lines. I left many imperfections, pocks and pits because I want the table to look old and a bit battered. I want some color to settle into the pits.

Golden-Moulding-Paste-Raised-Stencil

I added a “sort of floral” pattern along the edges. That pattern I believe was from stock photography like iStockphoto or ShutterStock, and I cut it with a Cricut Explore.

Metallic Paints

Gather a bunch of metallics. Lots! I used mostly acrylics: coppers, bronzes, silver, golds from bright gold to old gold, even a shimmery metallic black. And yeah, I used several coppers, several bronzes. This builds up a depth of color and variety.

Brass Moroccan Table Look with Paint

I couldn’t even tell you what metallic I did first, second, third, fourth etc. because I didn’t document and photograph every step. I needed to get into a creative flow with this. Stopping to document really interrupts that. In general, I used gold and silver in the middle, and darker metallics like the bronzes and black on the edges. I used more bronze and black along the bottoms and feathered it out about 1/3 to halfway up.

Spray Watered Down Paint & Spread It

I wanted “dust” in the crevices between the raised patterns. This was a two-step process. For “dust” to show up, it’s better if it’s on a darker background. So first you paint a dark background, then you do the dust over it.

First, fill a spray bottle with water and black paint. The ratio should be 20% paint, 80% water. Maybe even 10% paint, 90% water. Lots of water so the paint is runny. This is MESSY. Protect the surface under your project. I had  a dropcloth on the floor but some black paint splashed on white walls nearby!

Painting a Table to Look Old

I sprayed the watery paint lightly over the top of the table, then immediately — before it dried — smooshed it into the crevices with a tile grout spreader. To do this, you simply drag the grout spreader over the surface so you’re pushing the watery paint off the raised patterns, so the color flows between the patterns. The tile grout spreader behaves sort of like a trowel but it has a gentler, rubbery edge.

Here’s a video showing how to smoooooosh watery paint between the raised stencils:

Extra water WILL run off your project. You might get drips. Some people like drips, some don’t. Have paper towel on hand to dab watery paint where you don’t want it. Let the surface dry.

Now. You might notice my table has six sides. When you do this watery paint spray, you have to spray it on a horizontal surface. So … I had seven surfaces, and all had to dry before I could roll the table over and do the next side! It took forever.

But wait, there’s more. Next we add the “dust” over the dark areas in the crevices.

Dust is not shiny, so I used matte chalk and clay paints, like a neutral DIY Paint or Dixie Belle paint. I washed the black paint out of the spray bottle, then made another watery paint with about 10-20% clay/chalk paint with 80-90% water.

I followed the same steps as above. Spray the watery paint on a flat horizontal surface. Smoooooshhhhh the watery paint into the crevices with the tile grout spreader.

Old Brass Table Look with Paint

And yeah, I had to do this with all seven surfaces, letting them all dry before flipping the table over.

When the paint dries, you should see what looks like “dust” in the cracks between the patterns.

If the raised patterns have pits and holes in them, the black paint and the chalky paint will settle into those pits and make cool old-looking patina.

It Looks Worse Before It Gets Better

This admittedly looks terrible. When working with lots of paint layers, it looks worse before it gets better!

Dry Brushing

Dry brushing toned down the black streaks:

Tone Down Paint with Dry Brushing

Dry brushing a great for depth and variety of color. After I applied a base of bright gold in the middles and bronzes on the edges, most of the painting was dry brushing one color after another after another after another. Until I got the look I wanted.

There was some re-doing and re-painting with dry brushing.

Sometimes the table got too light — I dry brushed too much silver.

Sometimes it got too red — I dry brushed too much copper.

Sometimes the gold got too muddy — I dry brushed too much black on the gold.

None of this is a problem. It’s part of the process and everything can be painted over. The nice thing about dry brushing is you can do many layers, and the paint doesn’t get too thick because you’re applying barely-there feathers of paint. When color was going in the wrong direction, I corrected it by dry brushing another color. I was aiming for a color in my head, and I knew if it was on track or if it was off.

Dusty Look

Old Brass Look

Final Result

I’ll be honest, I was getting really tired of this table at the end.

Even when it was done, it sat in the sunroom for a few days before I brought it in to photograph it. I was THAT tired of painting it!

The work was worth it though. It is exactly the Moroccan table picture that popped in my mind. It looks good between red chairs.

Old Moroccan Table with Paint and Raised Stencils

I have not sealed it with any wax or topcoat. I worry about changing the sheen of the metallics and/or the “dust.” I worked so hard to get it the way I wanted it, I would kick myself if i put a topcoat on it and the color or sheen changed! Most of the paint is acrylic and the table is not heavily used, so I’m not worried about wear ‘n tear.

So if you’ve been looking at something that you wish was different — even if it’s something you painted — it’s only paint. You can always re-paint. Try it, have fun, play with giving it a different look!

Raised Stencil Moroccan Table





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How to Layer a Crazy Mix of Stencils on a Wall

In February 2018, I went on a three-week painting binge … in India!

Yes. I painted stencils all over three walls, canvasses, carved wood, backplates for sconces. It was the best three weeks ever. Despite having a bad cold, and terrible hacking-coughing 10 feet up on a ladder. But hey, I stenciled to the tippy-top of those 10 foot walls!

Crazy Mix of Stencils on a Wall

India Apartment Guest Room

This was one wall I painted. Imagine this as the background of … SOME DAY … a four-poster daybed of carved wood with fantastical India motifs. Painted light gray. Draped with sheer sarees cascading down the posts. And slathered with kantha quilts and pillows in bright pinks, oranges and blues with just a touch of that mustard color.

Some day this will be a fully-complete guest room. For now, it’s my husband’s office when he’s in Chennai, India. And this wall probably isn’t what he was expecting! But he still has a more professional plain white wall for his GoToMeeting and Skype calls from the desk in the corner.

How to Layer Stencils On a Wall

So … here’s a step by step of how to “build” a stenciled wall like this. I will warn, there’s some measuring to do. A yardstick or measuring tape does the math for you.

First, decide which stencils you want to put where. Which stencils do you want on the bottom, in the middle, on the top? Here was my mock-up. I had an idea in mind, and wanted to see if I still liked it on the wall:

Stencil Layout and Measurements of Backgrounds

Which stencils do you choose? Here was my rule of thumb – I tried to go for contrast in different ways:

  • The stencil at the bottom is “denser” and will be filled with a lot more paint than the “lighter” trellis pattern on the top. So I balanced a denser/heavier pattern with a lighter pattern.
  • The paisley and trellis patterns have curvy lines, so I chose a blockier geographic type stencil for the border in the middle.

So those are some ways you can get contrast. You can also pair big stencil patterns with small patterns. Mix florals with straight-edge geometrics.

Now, decide if you want different color backgrounds behind your stencils. You don’t have to do backgrounds. Different backgrounds add extra dimension, but they also add extra time and difficulty. If you want, you could just paint the stencils, with the wall the same color behind all stencils. But if you want different background colors, measuring is important.

As you see above, I started taping the wall to mark where background colors would be painted. I measured the bottom section first, then I measured for the border in the middle. I drew pencil lines on the wall. You can see these lines just barely in the photo above near the middle border area. You will have to keep moving the blue lines from one side of the pencil lines to the other, and tape over areas you just painted, so be careful. Paint should have enough time to dry so you don’t pull it off with the tape.

How to Choose Colors

Look at other things in the room. This is in India, and eventually this guest bedroom will have a bed covered with bright colors, and walls with bright art:

Guest Bedroom Colors

Guest Bedroom Colors

I decided to play up the pink, and bring the grays and silvers to the top of the wall to give the eye a rest from the color crazy that will eventually fill much of the room. And for contrast to the feminine pinks and curves, I chose the mustardy-turmeric-curry color for the border.

Here’s a view of the rug in the room which also has these colors:

India Guest Bedroom Rug

Here’s the wall taped off and ready for painting the background colors:

Taped for Background Color Painting

Painting Background Colors

I can’t just run to the store for paint in India like I can at home by Chicago. Well, I CAN – there is an Asian Paints within walking distance of our apartment. Asian Paints is like the Benjamin Moore or Sherwin Williams of India. But, I already had many sample sizes of Asian Paints. Some of them were older. Pro painters would probably groan at what I did. I wanted a light warm pink background on the bottom but I didn’t have pink. So I chose the creamier/ivory Asian Paints latex colors and dumped them all in a container. Then I added drops of Emperor’s Silk Chalk Paint by Annie Sloan until the pink was where I wanted it:

Mixing a Pink Paint

Mixing a Pink Paint

Starting with warm creamy ivories and adding red made a warm dusty pink. I was channeling the Pink City of Jaipur.

I had limited supplies, so I mixed this in a Frog Tape container!

Frog Tape

Asian Paints paint sticks to everything, plus I don’t know where the water drains from our India apartment or the effects of paint going down our drains. So I didn’t clean the container, I just threw it out. There’s a few guys who live near the community garbage bins who make money from pulling garbage and recycling it. They watch for us. They LOVE our garbage!

I wanted an uneven, plaster-y look on the wall. So I spread light amounts of paint on a trowel – honestly, a cheap and BROKEN plastic trowel, the only thing I had available in India – and troweled the latex paint on the wall.

Troweling Latex Paint

The broken trowel got annoying. I had to be careful to not make sharp scratches with it. But, it worked okay. I eventually had to break off the broken part.

Broken Plastic Trowel

I moved the trowel every which way like drunken hashmarks, for an uneven application. It went very fast. I let some splotches of the original white paint show through. Because the trowel applied a light layer, the paint dried fast.

Soon, I was choosing colors for the next step, stenciling:

Which Metallic to Paint

Hmmm, which to choose?

Though it’s hard to tell from the pictures because it looks pink, I chose the orange in the middle. I forget which paint it was now. It’s a metallic that has orange & pink. The stencil is the Rani Paisley Stencil from Royal Design Studio in furniture stencil size. You can also get it bigger in wall stencil size.

Painting Paisley Stencil on Wall

You can see I finished one entire section – background + stencil – before moving up to the next section.

Painting a Border

Unfortunately I did not photograph every step of the border section. It got dark out. This room is lit with two lousy lightbulbs. I could barely see with my eyes wide open.

There was some fancy moving of the tape several times. Remember you have to move the tape or you will have an unpainted area behind the tape! I had to remove some tape and put it over the pink area, then paint the border background. The background is the mustardy-curry color. Then I used a metallic copper color to paint stencils over the curry color. Here’s a close-up:

Stencil Border Detail

Honestly I think I was doing all this at 2 a.m. Because jetlag. And, you can see I did crazy stuff with a skinny border line for extra credit or something, even though there’s no teacher to impress, it’s just myself.

I don’t even know how to explain how to measure to get the curry color background behind the big geometric shapes, and the pink background behind those skinny lines. That really needed to be a video to show you. Just … measure twice, then measure again, and measure again. Test a small area first before painting the whole thing. Test in an area that’s usually behind a door, curtain or cabinet, somewhere not seen so well. You can always paint over it and start over if you measured wrong.

Or sometimes a better idea is to not drive yourself crazy with all this measuring in the first place. Why didn’t I think of that.

At some point it was light out again. And it must have been hot, because the ceiling fan is running.

Now it’s time to paint the top. And climb up the ladder and try not to get hit by the ceiling fan!

Stenciling in India

You can see here, the pink on the bottom relates to the pink in the floor tile, and the dark copper in the border relates to the copper in the ceiling fan. Also on the other end of the room, there are dark copper wall sconces and some curry/tamarind color on the wall. So these colors get repeated around the room.

Mixing More Colors

Now, I wanted a silvery gray background on the top. I stared at the wall for awhile and wondered if I should go bold, really BOLD, and paint bright color on the top too. But honestly, all this color is pushing it for me personally. And it’s feeling more feminine than what I’m comfortable with. So I decided to tame things down just a little bit by painting tones of silvery gray on the top.

I pulled white latex paints with cool undertones from Asian Paints from my stash of sample paints. Then, mixed Aged Nickel Stencil Creme from Royal Design Studio into the Asian Paint whites. The Aged Nickel has shimmer and sheen so it added a metallic glimmer to the latex paint.

Mixing Silvery Gray Paint

I was also hoping I wasn’t compromising the Asian Paints with this mixing, but as I write this, the paint has been on the wall for a year, my husband has visited the apartment recently, and the walls are fine. The colors I added are a very small % of the paint.

Mixing Silvery Gray Paint

Like I did with the pink background, I troweled the silvery gray paint on with the broken plastic trowel. It’s a light layer:

Troweling on Silvery Gray Paint

Then, I stenciled the trellis stencil with straight up Aged Nickel Stencil Creme for a tone on tone look. The stencil is the Raj Indian Trellis Stencil from Royal Design Studio.

Raj Trellis Stencil

Things are getting shadowy again, so another day has gone by.

On the Third Day, She Styles!

Finally finished! We don’t have furniture for this room yet, so I pulled in sofa cushions from the living room and styled them up like a Moroccan floor seating situation. Just pretend there’s chai tea or mint tea.

Styled Up

Even a tassel I found in Marrakech has the colors of this room:

Indian-Moroccan Style

Guest Room in India Apartment

As the sun sets again, the colors deepen and get mysterious. Time to relax and enjoy!

Colors of the Guest Room

See another stenciled wall in this same apartment in India – it’s a “headboard” behind the master bedroom bed. It’s a very different look! Visit the post that shows how I painted this with stencils and metallic paints:

Painted Headboard Wall Finished





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DIY Painted Wall Headboard

If you want a unique, one-of-a-kind and affordable headboard, how about painting a headboard on the wall? If you like to change decor often, you can easily paint over it to make a new look. You can customize it to the color and design you want. That’s what I did to make a unique headboard in our apartment in India.

The first time I shared the inspiration photo for this project was way back in October 2010:

Inspiration Photo

That was only 3 days after I launched this blog! In February 2018, I spent three weeks in India, working in the apartment. I finally painted this:

Painted Headboard Wall Finished

I’m happy to see this idea come true!

Why did it take so long to get things done? Two reasons:  1) There was a lot of trial and error with architects and contractors from half a planet away, and we got so frustrated that we stopped working on the apartment for a while, and 2) My husband and I both worked full-time so there was limited time to go to India.

How to make a painted headboard wall

As you’ll see below, I used stencils for my headboard wall. But you don’t have to use stencils. You can paint whatever you want. I mostly hope to inspire you to see a different way to do things than the usual way, which is to buy a wood headboard or upholstered headboard. You don’t even have to paint all the way up to the ceiling. You can paint a square, rectangle, arched or rounded shape on the wall in the area where you usually see headboards.

The original inspiration photo was published in an Australian décor magazine, Vogue Living. It is a mother-of-pearl door from India. To make the diamond shapes like you see in the door, I used stencils from Royal Design Studio — the large Star Diamonds Wall Stencil and the smaller Star Diamonds Furniture Stencil:

Star Diamond Stencils

Mother-of-pearl has a metallic quality to it, so I painted with shimmery paints. I used Royal Design Studio Stencil Cremes in Bronze Age, Smoked Oyster and Aged Nickel. And I made a custom copper.

Stencil Creme

There’s a copper color Stencil Creme (Copper Kettle) but I didn’t have enough. So I mixed these colors together to make a yummy rich glowing copper:

Custom Copper Color

First, I painted a base coat with a taupe color, Asian Paints Silk Route, back in 2015!

Asian Paints Silk Route

I thought this base coat would make it easier to build rich color than stenciling directly on a white wall.

Now, 3 years later, I dabbed and swirled one of the shimmery Stencil Cremes over the Silk Route paint. I think this was Aged Nickel? Or it could have been Bronze Age. I’m sorry I didn’t keep notes.

Metallic Base Coat

Here you can see the mottled metallic look made by the shimmery paint:

Shimmery Base Coat

It’s a little blotchy but that gets covered up a lot by the stenciled pattern.

So many of these photos will be bad, I admit it! I painted most of this at night with bad lighting. The lighting was even worse than usual because one of the wall sconces stopped working.

Here you see I painted the big diamonds along the edges first. Then I filled in the middle with the small diamonds:

In Progress

This is 10 feet tall! It’s hard to tell by the photos how tall it is. It took many hours to fill in the whole pattern. I had two of these small diamond stencils, so I could work in two areas at the same time while paint dried.

Almost done!! After painting all night until about 4 a.m.

Almost Done

I remember being really sick and coughing so hard it hurt while painting this. Why keep painting? There was limited time before I had to go home to Chicago. And I’d already waited more than 7 years to paint this! So I didn’t care how sick I was. I decided not to climb to the top of the ladder and finish that top row at 4 a.m. when I was so tired and sick. I left it for the next day.

Once this was done, it seemed like it needed something more. It just didn’t “feel finished.” So I painted some more. I added dark borders and scrolly stencil patterns on the edges:

Adding Borders

The scrolly pattern is a custom stencil cut with my Cricut Explore, with a vector illustration purchased from Shutterstock.

Ahhhh! This feels better! It feels done!

Finished Painted Wall Headboard

Are there enough diamond shapes here?!

Also, I “pounced” or dabbed bronze and silver colors over the patterns with a brush to make an antique and “slightly dirty” look:

Close Up of Pattern

The day after, I was so tired from painting till 4 a.m., I crashed with the phone next to me, probably in the middle of Instagramming. When I opened my eyes, I saw this. The rich, multi-patterned look I worked so hard to make:

Scene in Master Bedroom Pattern Layers

It’s a little thing, but this view made it all worth it!

This boho chic patchwork pillow is another DIY project shared here on the blog:

DIY Stenciled Patterned Pillow

Here are shots of the room:

Tassel

Block Print Bedding and Curtain

Master Bedroom Simple Furnishings

Chinese Chest Nightstand

Simple Master Bedroom

It’s furnished simply. We spend only a few weeks a year here so we don’t need much stuff. And everything gets very dusty in India, even indoors, so the less stuff we have, the less stuff we have to clean.

Some walls still need more art. But the “headboard wall” is complete. Finally.

DIY Painted Headboard Wall

For a very different look, visit a post where I show how to use different stencils like the wall shown below. This wall is also in our apartment in India, in the guest bedroom. It’s a softer more feminine look:

Crazy Mix of Stencils on a Wall





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Furniture Makeover: From Danish Modern to “Antique”

Several times, I’ve transformed furniture from a plain “Danish modern” style into something far more interesting (to me, at least!). Did you know you can makeover furniture from plain Danish modern into a global style — Chinese antique and Indian antique?

Here’s a few pieces I’ve made over …

I did a makeover on this cabinet to make it look like a Chinese antique:

DIY Cabinet Makeover

Click here for a full tutorial. I used a small poster of a Chinese scene that I ordered from the V&A Museum, olive green milk paint, a few pieces of basswood, and Chinese style hardware found on eBay. That’s it! It now fits much better with our global decor, with Moroccan lanterns and a gong found in Cambodia.

I added raised stencils and Chalk Paint to this armoire to make it look like an Indian antique:

DIY Armoire Makeover

Click here for a full tutorial. I used a Moroccan stencil from Royal Design Studio and created a raised effect, and several colors of Chalk Paint and Clear Wax from Annie Sloan to totally transform this armoire. Oh, and new pulls that look old, from Anthropologie.

Cabinet Makeover Indian Antique

I’m itching to do another piece. I wanted a shelf or cabinet in our living room to hold a bunch of books. While surfing the Ikea website, I found the BESTA cabinet with DJUPVIKEN doors:

IKEA BESTA DJUPVIKEN Doors

That’s what that cabinet looks like now. But when I look at it, I see its future!

I see adding paint to make it look old, metal studs, and old metal hardware from India, to make it look like an antique damachiya (wedding chest) from northern India. Here’s a few examples of what this cabinet could become …

This damachiya was sold by Hammer & Hand Imports at Etsy. I loooove it, the chippy turquoise paint:

Antique Turquoise Blue Indian Wedding Chest Global Warm Industrial Storage Trunk Sideboard Console Media Console

Incidentally, the carved chippy painted wood piece that we used for the base of a bathroom counter in our “second home” apartment in India was found at the Hammer & Hand Etsy shop — check out what we did with it!

Here’s a damachiya that shows the metal stud idea, from De-Cor in Pasadena, California:

Damachiya from de-cor

I think it’s the raised square-ish shapes on the IKEA cabinet that made me see it as a damachiya similar to these old chests. With chalk paint or milk paint and the right metal accents, I could make the IKEA look old, like we found it in a desert hideaway in Rajasthan and shipped it to Chicago!

You can tell I’m not a huge fan of the currently popular mid-century modern style. Because any furniture we own that’s similar to that style, I keep turning into global antique style!

Maybe you will see a “DIY damachiya” in my living room in a future post.





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