Surface Prep and Sealing the Walls

Be sure your surface is clean, dry and the has the color you like on it (paint your walls with a satin or eggshell house paint if you need to change the color).

Using a good painter’s tape, tape off any areas that will not be glazed like ceilings and moldings.

Burnish the edge of your tape by pressing down using a hard flat object like the edge of an old credit card. This prevents bleeding* and gives a crisp edge.

*bleeding – paint seepage through your taped edge that doesn’t look perfectly beautiful.

Roll on a thin and complete coat of Caromal Colours® Wall Sealer as you would any ordinary paint.

Caromal Colours® Wall Sealer insures a well sealed surface that will give you plenty of working time with your glaze. Remember the definition of a glaze….a wet medium. Skipping this step is like putting down mulch without weeding the beds

Be careful not to skip any areas.

Allow this to dry overnight.

Tips

• Glazing a room is a good weekend project. It will take one day to apply the Wall Sealer and one or two to do the glazing. Add a day if you need to change the color of your walls.
  
  One person can easily do glazing, but it is a lot more fun to work with someone else - so grab your spouse or a friend. One person can apply the Glaze and the other can manipulate it.
  
  You should always make a sample that can be a poster board from a craft store painted with the basecoat color. Experimenting with different finishes on a small poster board before doing a large wall makes a lot of sense

Applying the Glaze

Tips

• A hallmark of good glazing is clean corners that are neither too dark nor too light. To accomplish this, tape off opposite walls, glaze two walls and let them dry. Then, tape over the edges of the walls that you glazed and glaze the remaining two walls.
•  
• Rolling Glaze heavily into corners and edges will make these areas unattractively dark. You will then have to work hard to remove it.
•  
• The best way to do corners and edges is to dip your brush into the Glaze a bit. Then, dry the brush onto a cloth and stipple a very small amount into these areas. After you manipulate the rest of your Glaze, these soft stippled areas should blend seamlessly into the rest of the finish. This is the trick that separates the men from the boys or women from the girls, so to speak!!
  
  Don’t worry about applying the Glaze perfectly; you are just rolling it to get it on the wall.
  
  Leave a ‘wet edge’ at the end of each section of Glaze that you apply. This is a about a foot of Glaze that you don’t manipulate. Roll your next section of Glaze into the wet edge, and manipulate the glaze so that the two sections blend together.

Manipulating the Glaze

A very light brushing with the tips of a badger blending brush can be used to soften the finish.  The pattern stays, but softly ‘fuses’ together.

To prevent damaging your finish let the Glaze set up a bit before softening and use the lightest pressure imaginable. If your Glaze is too wet, your hand pressure is too hard, then the brush could scratch the finish. But when you wait a bit and soften your touch the result is gorgeous!

The sign of a beautifully done Glaze is not being able to tell the tool used to produce it. Often, softening with a badger blender accomplishes this goal.

Tips

• Use any tool you can think of to manipulate your wet Glaze.
  
  If you overwork, bang or repeatedly pat the Glaze you will be drying it, making it difficult to work.
  
  It is better to “walk” the Glaze by pushing it, as though you are dusting or washing the walls.
  
  Close up the wall will look irregular, and that is good! If you make the Glaze look too perfect close up, it will probably look like a regular painted surface from a good viewing distance.
  
  Think of setting up a consistently irregular pattern or design in the Glaze that will look beautiful from a distance.
  
  Stand back from your Glaze (a little further back!!) to check for your desired effect.
  
  The less hard you work the Glaze the easier it will be to keep it wet. If glazing is hard work, you are probably overworking and over thinking this process.
  
  Experiment with various cloths (we like terry cloths from a bulk store). Wash and dry them in a dryer to keep lint to a minimum.
  
  Using a damp cloth will remove more Glaze for a more subtle effect.

Pull through glaze with a brush

Dampen & mottle through glaze

Lay on top of wet glaze & remove

Push your fingers though glaze