This is the second time I’ve used milk paint from Real Milk Paint Company to finish a frame. I’ve added a link to my blog about that frame. The design and construction of both frames is similar, the only difference is in the carving on the outer band and the color of the paint. You can see the first blog here where I went into more detail about making the frame. I’ve had a number of comments asking about the technique I used to finish it and this blog is about that.

After assembly, the first step was to apply the base coat of Cheesecake from RMP. It has a warmth that appealed to me. On the first frame I used their Black Iron which, as the name implies; is a deep black. For this frame I wanted to experiment with creating a custom color. The Real Milk Paint Co. has a color chart showing how blending their Soft White with any other color will customize that color. I used 1 part of the Soft White to 9 parts of the Black Iron. I discovered that using and mixing small quantities of the milk paint with their marble techniques left too much of the paint powder in the can. Lee Valley hardware has this small min whisk which I found to work well after bending the whisk section upwards which lets you get to the bottom of the can. I used the marble technique too. These pictures show the procedure:

The painting this frame was created for is titled Shop Girl, it’s oil on stretched canvas, measures 24″ square, and was painted by my wife Diane Eugster. After the base coat was applied it was scuff sanded with 320 paper. No sanding between the top coats as that would probably remove some of the Chippy material. I did lightly scuff sand the final top coat with a white, nylon scrubby before rubbing on two coats of the OSMO Polyx 3043 satin. My goal was to expose enough of the top coat to replicate some aging but not so much that it’d look like a beat up old frame. The base coat compliments that light vertical detail near the center of the painting while the final coat mimics the shop girls skirt. That’s what makes a frame truly custom.

Since it’s difficult to show the entire frame in a photograph I made this short video “tour” of how the entire frame looks, it’s on my YouTube Channel.