Faux Tissue Paper Technique {Old World Style Armoire }

Today I'm going to show you how to create a unique finish that can be used on furniture and walls, or even as a piece of art for your home. Using tissue paper to create a faux finish is a relatively easy way to add old world character to your space.

For this project you will need:

• Tissue Paper (The kind presents are wrapped in)
• Paint (Either a single color or multiple colors, depending on the look you want)
• Rollers or a Brush
• Glaze (Optional)

That's it!

Now, this particular cabinet/armoire/hutch (I'm not really sure what it was supposed to be) needed some extra work due to the face that it had no top. It looked finished in the pictures online, but when my husband brought it home I discovered that it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I suspect that's why the man selling it took my low-ball offer of $10. But I knew my husband could easily build a top for this awesome piece.

One trip to Lowes and an hour later, it was officially an armoire. All we did was cut a piece of wood to size, use wood blocks to support the weight of the top and add some thin, cheap trim to finish the edges.

Now it was time to start prepping for some paint. You know what I mean - Priming the piece!

After the primer had dried, I painted the armoire my absolute favorite brown: Valspar Java Brown. This is a great color to paint furniture when you want to simulate dark wood: It's very neutral. Not too yellow, not too grey, not too red - Just a delicious deep, dark brown.

I took the painting a step further by glazing the brown with Rustoleum glaze in Kona. Kona is about as dark brown as it gets before turning black. These colors work really well together since they're similar enough to one another that your paint job doesn't look muddled (which can happen with glaze).

Now, onto the fun part!

For the faux tissue paper technique, I took multiple pieces of tissue paper and ripped away the straight edges. This is suggested because once you lay the pieces of tissue paper on top of each other, straight edges will look awkward and out of place. The only place you will want straight edges is along the edge and corners of your surface, so I saved the ripped away pieces for those areas.

Next, I took all of my prepped paper and crumple it into a ball. The more you crumple it, the more texture you will have on your piece!

Now it was time to paint and apply the tissue paper. I picked my base color and began painting the area I wanted to apply the paper. (For this project, I chose Valspar Green Water because it was a great complimentary color to the decor in our bedroom.) As I laid my paint down, I took a piece of tissue paper, smoothed it out, and laid it directly onto the wet paint. The paint works as both a base color and glue that holds the tissue paper in place. I gently used my fingers and the tip of a paint brush to smooth out the texture and remove air bubbles. Gentle is key here, because if you're too rough with the paper it will rip. I moved on to the next section and repeated until the entire surface was covered, slightly overlapping each piece of paper until I had uniform coverage.

After the first coat of paint dried, I found it was easier to spot places I had missed. I just placed a small piece of tissue paper on any bare areas and painted them on when I did my second coat.

When both coats of paint had dried, I took it a step further by applying more colors and a coat of glaze. I used three additional colors to give the panels an aged look by dry brushing and blending each color into the next.

Once my paint dried, I added some gold glaze. I went heavier in some areas and lightly brushed it onto others, because I wanted this armoire to have an older, worn look.


So now that you know how to create the faux tissue paper technique, what will you be trying it on?