Leigh Ann and I love carved items, so when I spotted this unfinished blue whale in a shop in Salt Lake City, I couldn’t resist adding him to our collection — and planning on how I was going to give him some needed color.
At the time I was with the Minwax® team in our SNAP! bloggers conference booth, where we were introducing several new colors in our line of Water Based Stains, so naturally I had to do some experimenting, starting with a base coat of white stain on my whale.
After it dried, I lightly started brushing on the Indigo stain in the Minwax® Express Color™ line, letting the white base coat show through in places for a more natural effect.
And since I love the look of true antiques, I “aged” my new whale by lightly sanding off the dried stain with a piece of #180-grit sandpaper, just removing the color on the raised portions which would naturally show the most wear.
And now my unfinished whale is a more realistic model of a blue whale, a proud addition to the mantle over our fireplace.
Until next time,
Measure twice, Saw once!
Thanks!
Bruce
