How to Begin Crackle Painting a Wall | Paint Techniques

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And today we're going to explore how to achieve a crackle textured finish. So in order to actually get crackles one has to always use as one's base rabbit-hide glue which is also called 'size', and it's a clear liquid which you can find at some art stores. And basically you're going to roll it on your roller and apply it to your surface. And it's always a good idea to actually seal the surface or possibly use a paint that's at least an egg shell base.

So now our size has become a little bit tacky which means it's still wet because it will never actually completely dry out, but it will drier than when we first applied it. So in order to find out when the size is absolutely ready for you to apply your textured finish, it's a good idea to look at the back of the containers on the labels to see because each product has different drying times. So this product that I used has a three hour drying time, so we've waited out three hours and now we're back to put a textured finish on top of the size.

So here I'm using just a synthetic texture which is a fairly rough plaster and I'm just going to apply it all over this square. So you can manipulate this any way you like. I did want a little bit of movement in this finish so it is, for all practical purposes, fairly smooth which a few ridges here and there. So that is step two of the crackle texture. We've done the size and now we have completed the texture part.