Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint is so wonderful to work with (which is a big reason we chose to embrace it at fivethirty home). Not only can you paint without priming and/or leaving brush strokes, you can also make your piece look as well-worn and loved as you’d like…and without a ton of work or mess. Whether you like the heavily worn chippy look or just a tad of distressing here and there, it’s easy to achieve the desired result.
One look is to leave much of the paint in place and use a light sand paper or electric sander to remove a little of the milk paint where natural wear would occur, like in the image below. In this piece we are letting some of the natural wood show through. We use a 220 grit sandpaper or sanding block for this.
Another idea is to paint a base color, then repeat the above process, allowing some of the color to peak through. Our signature piece, the kitchen scale paint display, was painted using this technique. We went over the whole piece lightly with 220 grit and hemp oil.
One other great technique is to make the paint “chippy” like in our example below. This process is easy, too. If your piece is glossy, milk paint will chip all on its own! If it is a flat finish or raw wood, use the wax puck or our hemp oil to do a resist then add the color, and begin chipping away at the paint to give it a “well-loved” look.
chippy dried lavender and ironstone
So, Friends, paint away, and distress to your heart’s desire (and remember, we are here to help, so call if you need us).