Acrylic Paint Stain

Creating a wood stain with acrylic paints is easy to do and great for crafts. Using acrylic paints makes it cheap and gives you a wider variety of colors to use. I used a simple brown paint for this tutorial on a scrap piece of wood for a sign project I'm working on for a gift.

You don't need much to get yourself started. If you are using scrap wood and not a store bought already cut and sanded piece of wood(or box, picture frame, dollhouse pieces, etc.) then you may want to consider sanding it out before you stain it if you think it's needed. My scrap piece of wood was already good to go for this project so I am not including a step on sanding.

Supplies you'll need are:

• Paint - any color should work, though I have not tried this with glittered acrylics
• Brush - I used a sponge brush, but really any type of brush will work
• Water - the amount isn't specific, the more water you use the softer the color and vice versa. The amount used is up to you. 

Be liberal with the paint. The brush I used to mix the water and paint was not what I used to paint my board. Remember to check that you mix the paint and water thoroughly, there will be chunks of paint at the bottom of your glass(or whatever you use for your mixture).

Don't be afraid to go heavy with each coat. The wood is going to soak up your stain, and when it dries it will not be as dark as it was when you applied it. The above photo is a comparison of the stain wet and dry.

You'll want to wait for each coat to dry before you apply any more coats. The number of coats you do is again up to you. If you think you've made your stain too light you can either add more paint to your mixture or just apply more coats. If you find you've made it too dark, then aim for fewer coats.

This is my project after three coats of stain. The close up is a better representation of the final color out come. Any more and it would have been too dark for my liking, but this shade is pretty spot on for what I wanted.

On a final note you will need to watch out for your project warping since you are using a water based stain to color it. If you purchased a wooden item to stain it may not be as much of a worry, but wood scraps are scraps for a reason. The piece I used was already slightly warped and after I finished staining it the warping became worse. I did find am alternative use for my thread box and sewing machine however and both are working great at weighing down my board. If you do have a warping issue and you are able to weigh down your project make sure to do so while it's still wet. Using my thread box ensures that if it makes any marks on my drying project I can easily fix it or work with it when I finish painting my board.

I'll link the finished project here later.

***This is my finished project, it was a Harry Potter themed sign I made as a gift for the husband unit. I did a combination of metallic gold, acrylic paint and a gold paint marker from Sharpie to keep the lettering neat(I did go over it with the gold acrylic to match the colors).