‘Featured Finishes’ Series: Episode 3
This week we’re bringing the wild inside with animal textures and prints. Nature may be beautiful, but she can also be dangerous with her many wild inhabitants. Leather animal prints have always had their place in design but more of us want the look & feel rather than the actual animal skins. Spice up your space with alligator or snakeskin without any animal wrestling. No animals harmed here – just imaginations on the loose!
This week, let’s get… Wild n’ Dangerous
We’ve got the Gator Touch! This wild faux finish can be as tame or outlandish as you want. It’s application is smashing on anything. Furniture, cabinets and wall displays look killer wrapped in ‘gator, and I’ve even seen someone create a custom toilet seat cover! Honestly, you could even take a sturdy corrugate box or crate and finish it with Gator Touch. No one will even know what the base piece is made of! This finish is really all about your imagination. The mediums and tools used work well on uneven/curved surfaces so your options for application aren’t relegated to straight angled items. Since this isn’t a stencil but actual mediums you can touch and feel, it really creates a centerpiece that will draw your eye… and encourage you to reach out and touch it.
When thinking about where you could incorporate this into your room, don’t lock into the natural color palette. All tinting is custom so your ‘gator can be any color you want. You could even kick things up another notch by adding in metallic powders, glitter or other shiny elements to reflect the light.
Hissssss… People either love snakes or are just terrified by them. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground. At nluv Studio, we love the texture and look of snakeskin to add flair to any room. The creation of this wild faux finish is much like the Gator Touch but with a couple different tools. To really get the snakeskin color pattern, it’s easiest to use a stencil to imprint the base color across the entire design and then layer the remaining colors over top as the final step. Because the snakeskin look can be so dramatic, you could put it on a small piece, like a picture box or side table and everyone will still take notice and be drawn to it. With its bold statement, this finish works great on accents like trunks, side tables, cabinet door insets, frames… you get the idea.
When it comes to color, this is all customized tints so your snake can have any color palette. You will invoke a completely different feel doing this in black & white vs. a full color snake straight off the Discovery Channel. Don’t let nature dictate the color of your finish – go bold, go wild and have fun!
Check out the Finish Gallery for more inspiration.