Creating a Faux Verdigris Finish

When we went looking for a new way to light our side terrace we settled on a street light. While we set out in search of a relatively plain one, we spotted this guy and decided we had to have it. Luckily, the reason we could afford it was that someone had given it a partial paint job and quit, leaving it half an unmatchable shade of green and half the barte aluminum in which it came.

I promised my husband that I would get up on a ladder and paint it myself if only we could have the flying gargoyles instead of the plain, simple ones that now looked disappointingly boring.

We got it - but my husband extracted his revenge for the additional dollars by demanding that instead of the nice, staid black I had been prepared to paint it, he insisted he wanted the look of aged bronze. Lucky for me, several years of experience painting theatrical sets came to the rescue.

Here is the way to make your own garden furniture and/or ornaments look like elegantly aged old copper. I first used this on an extravagant light post we bought to light our terrace - and it fooled everyone. Since then I have used the technique on garden furniture and even on cheap plastic garden lighting kits. I have found that you can stop after almost any of these steps once the wash of dark green is applied - and you will get the look of "not quite so old" copper.

Ingredients:

• Gold or copper spray paint - Rustoleum is great for outdoor projects but has a long drying time.)
• dark green latex paint
• robins egg blue latex paint
• mint green latex paint
• mineral spirits
• whiting
• ochre spray paint
• water
• dry plaster
• two sponges (natural sea sponges)

First make sure that the item that you are finishing is clean and dry. Be sure and spread a tarp or something if you are doing this on a surface that matters because, as you will see, this can get very messy.

Spray your item with the gold or copper spray paint. Complete coverage is not necessary, but try to make it fairly even. Some of this metallic finish will show through in the end and create the illusion that there is real copper beneath the "verdigris" - however there will be enough finish covering it that gold paint will do if copper is unavailable. Allow to dry thoroughly.

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