The Bakery - Week Three

After what seems like an endless eternity of stenciling, the brickwork on the inside and outside of the bakery's basement block is finished! That means it's time to say the same thing I always say after using a stencil to create brick or stone work - I am never doing that again! This time I might actually be forced to keep my word on that as neither of the craft shops in town seem to be keeping the ingredients for my 'stone/brick paste' anymore. Something else I'll have to buy online perhaps. Ater finishing with the stenciling and allowing the last lot of brickwork to dry, it was time to 'wash' the bricks. I do this to all the brick and stone finishes I have created with stencils and the texure paste mix as it has several effects. First, it evens out the colour where I've had to mix another batch of paste and the colour inevitably comes out a little different. Second, and yes I know this is a bit of a contradicition, it creates variations in the colour of the brick/stone by making the wash heavier in some places than others. The wash itself is made from a little extra of the brick 'paste', extra stone effect paint and acrylic paints all mixed in a pot of water so that the final mix is only fractionally less viscous than plain water. The 'raw' bricks were a little to sickly in colour for my taste so I added plenty of extra red and black paint to the wash I put over them to darken them up - and they ended up pink! Deciding to settle for pink brick I then highlighted random bricks with chalk paint in shades of brown and applied a couple of coats of sealer and finally, the bricks were finished!