Bamboo Linen Weave

A few years ago, when I was between jobs, I worked as an apprentice at a local painting design company called, “Faux-Like-A-Pro.”

Owner Sandra Kiss London needed to make sample boards of some of the faux painting techniques she created to give to hardware stores that would be selling her products. There, I helped create the sample cards and one of my favorite designs was bamboo linen weave, which I attempted to reproduce on my living room walls.

This was the process (all products are available at the online Faux-Like-A-Pro shop):

• Step One: Roll on two coats of Ivory Polished Plaster with a velour roller. Let dry one hour.
• Step Two: Apply another coat of Ivory Polished Plaster with a spatula in a vertical and horizontal cross-hatch fashion.
• Step Three: Dip a sponge in warm water and dampen the plaster in 3′ x 3′ sections. While plaster is still wet brush on Desert Sand Polished Plaster with a Pencil Dragger Brush using vertical and horizontal strokes. (Keep the brush damp. Offload plaster as needed onto a rag.)
• Step Four: Affix Exotic Bamboo Stencil to wall with low-tack tape. Dip a damp cellulose sponge into Fizzy Pigments (Bright green or moss green for leaves and stems; Use tobacco colored fizzy pigment for bamboo lines and shadows). Use caution by using very little pigment on the sponge.
• Step Five: Apply Clear-Flat Wax in same vertical and horizontal fashion that plaster was applied. Let dry 24 hours. Burnish with spatula by rubbing back and forth at a shallow angle (optional).

(Complete detailed instructions for this technique and 19 others are available for $50 on recipe cards from Faux-Like-A-Pro.) (All photos by Mark Micheli)