Milk paint is a powder made from casein or milk protein, clay, limestone and natural pigments. The paint has been found on cave walls decorated tens of thousands of years ago, from pharaohs’ tombs and on oriental furniture, painted by literary settlers that made do with what they needed. Milk paint could be bothered fairly readily, using two colours, to simulate age and wear on refinished or even new wood furniture.

Worn Away

Paint your trimmed and prepared piece with the base colour you want to show through, once the completed furniture is distressed. Darker undercoats are more dramatic than light but any contrasting shade makes the piece seem to be naturally outdated. You may use chocolate with a daffodil yellow shirt coat, or pewter with a light coral on top. Reverse dark and light with a dove gray undercoat and a barn red top coating. Apply the first coat, let it dry and brush onto the topcoat. Some very light colors and whites need two coats of milk paint to pay a darker colour underneath. After the last coat dries, wet a plastic kitchen scrubber with plain water and then move over the whole piece. Wipe down any areas that provide up paint with a moist rag. Then use the scrubber to gradually reveal a bit more of this base coat. Do not scrub away a lot of topcoat or your piece looks fake.

Chipped Finish

Milk paint does not stick over a nonporous finish so you can simulate chipping and aging by applying oil or wax into a slice. To control the impact, start by sanding the torso, table or chair — whatever you wish to colour — and then painting it with a base shade like the green of a bayberry holiday candle. When the first coat dries, rub on the borders, corners and areas around drawer pulls or any other surface that would have obtained heavy wear over the years with wax or olive oil. Then paint the entire piece another color — possibly a marigold or buttermilk. The best coat resists the treated areas; you can allow it to peel and flake by massaging these sections with a soft, damp cloth or sanding them gently with very fine grit paper to reveal the color beneath.

Stain and Craze

Milk paint mixed with water in a ratio of about three parts water to one part paint powder penetrates bare wood and stains it. A brand new wood cabinet or cabinet with conservative molding ages immediately when you manipulate proportions of water to paint powder. A coat of one part sea-foam green milk paint powder and 1 part water over grey stain — or baby blue over brown — chips as it dries, revealing the stain color beneath the thicker shirt coat. Look to colour complements for an unexpected distressed look on a kitchen cabinet — medium green stain with a bit of black to dull it, covered by a one-to-one ratio of cherry red milk paint . Gently sand or wipe down the chipped sections once the cabinet dries and then seal it with water-based polyurethane or antiquing wax.

Burnish and Burn

Mix bright red and medium blue milk paint to acquire a vibrant purple colour as the base coat onto a wood dining chair or an old sideboard. Then apply a top coat of the red paint and then heat it with a blow dryer to trend the paint as it dries. This gives you a crackled top coat with no extra procedure of utilizing crackle glaze. Produce a worn, burnished look on furniture at which it might have observed decades of rubbing, like the seat or arms of a chair or the top borders of a sideboard. Use heavy hemp string — not nylon, the artificial eliminates too much paint — and saw back and forth through the area to be worn away until you achieve the desired effect and the purple undercoat reveals through the surface.

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