Metallic Snake Skin

I am still happily ensconced at the Beacon Hill job. Today I spent some time working on another very fun project… a silver metallic snake skin finish on a beverage refrigerator. Here you can see the "before" picture.

This end table was my inspiration for the finish on the fridge. There are 2 of these tables in the room.

Three coats of a metallic silver were rolled onto the 2 sides of the fridge, after a good primer was applied. You can see my abstract tree and branches on the wall in the background. This was one of the first projects I did in this house and discussed in earlier posts.

I created my own stencil by placing a piece of paper on the top of the end table and doing a rubbing. I then taped the rubbing to the underside of a piece of glass, laid my e-z cut plastic over that and cut with a heat stencil cutter. I used a little re positionable spray adhesive to keep the stencil in place while I troweled on a thin layer of pearl metallic Palette Art. I did not want 100% coverage, so left some open spaces. It’s hard to see here, but I used a shaggy, cotton roller for the silver base, so it is also a bit textured and scaly looking.

Here’s a little closer look. So sorry about the glare, but you can see the detail of the scales. The pearl Palette Art dries more on the white side. Tomorrow, when I return, I will add a thin, silver glaze over the scales to blend them into the base a bit more. There will also be 2 1/2" horizontal border at the top and bottom of each side panel that has scales and rivets (to match the end tables).

For those of you who know my fear of snakes and reptiles in general, can you believe I am doing a snake skin?! A brave step for me, since I don’t even like to look at a photo of a real snake!