This is another one of those tutorials that I’ve been dying to share with you! Like sitting on my hands and anxiously waiting to type it out. But after taking 2 weeks off from blogging, I’m back and ready to give you this fabulous tutorial for achieving the aged chippy paint look on your next project.

Before I give you the chippy gritty, I want to give you the background story on those gorgeous corbels.

If you’ve been following along, I finally completed my 13 month kitchen renovation. The last task was installing two open shelves on the full tile wall. Finding the perfect corbels to use as shelf brackets was not an easy task. I scoured eBay, Craig’s List and salvage shops. I was really getting discouraged. That was when I met Garlan from Southern Accents Architectural Antiques at Haven. We talked for a few minutes and he showed me some of the corbels he had in his store . There were some wonderful old ones, but I felt a bit like Goldilocks. One was too tall. The other not big enough, but the biggest problem was that I needed four of them. Garlan showed me some new corbels that he had. He told me he has a guy that can duplicate any corbel design and can customize them to meet any size requirements. It was as if the heavens parted and angels sang! I was elated and couldn’t wait to find an image of a design I liked. But, again, the Goldilocks in me couldn’t find the “perfect” corbels. So, I opened up Adobe Illustrator and started to design my own unique corbels.

Chippy Paint Technique

I designed a scroll pattern based off of one corbel I saw, but also added some relief portions inside the corbel. I sent the image to Garlan and a week later he sent me a picture of one of the corbels. It was love at first sight! I quickly approved the initial one and waited anxiously for the corbels to arrive. When I opened the box, they were beautiful and exactly as I had pictured them in my head.

I set forth to give them an appropriate aged chippy paint look to fool people into thinking they were actually antique salvage. Here’s how I did it.

Chippy Paint Technique Materials:

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• Stain (Early American by Minwax)
• Milk paint
• Chalk paint
• Petroleum jelly (vaseline)
• Paint brushes
• Paint scraper
• Sand paper
• Putty knife
• Sponge
• Rag
• Cup of water
• My Secret Rustic Glaze Formula
• Frayed brush

Chippy Paint Technique Instructions:

First stain the wood using Early American by Minwax. Once the stain has thoroughly dried (overnight), mix your milk paint. (I mixed several of Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint colors together (French Enamel, Linen and Ironstone) to achieve the color blue I wanted.)

Paint three coats of the milk paint mixture, using a smaller brush to paint inside the scroll cut out.

Once the paint has dried, it’s time to start distressing. Wet a sponge and lightly wring it out. Lay the wet sponge onto the wood where you want to distress. After the water has time to soak into the paint a little, take a dry rag and rub at the wet area to remove some of the paint.

Next wipe some petroleum jelly on a few areas of the wood that you want to resist paint.

Paint white chalk paint over the entire piece (I didn’t paint inside the scroll design.) You can add a second coat if you desire a whiter finish.

After the chalk paint has dried, rub the putty knife over the paint. Areas where the vaseline is should lift up easily and create some chipping.

Lightly sand to remove more paint and distress further.

To truly achieve the antique look, you need to “dirty” the wood now. Use the frayed brush to lightly dry brush  My Secret Rustic Glaze Formula  onto several areas on the wood. Less is definitely more when it comes to glazing. For more tips on glazing you might want to read my tutorial on   how to use asphaltum glaze .

When you’re done, you should have a beautifully aged and chippy show stopper!

Tell the truth, did you know these were new corbels when you first saw them?

Stay tuned for the tutorial to hang shelves on a tile wall using corbel brackets.

Disclosure: Southern Accents Architectural Antiques provided the corbels for my kitchen in exchange for a mention in my post. As always, I choose the companies and brands I wish to work with. If I don’t like a product, service, etc. I don’t mention them on the blog. For more information about SAAA , or to order your own custom corbels check out their website .