Here's what I was up to yesterday

A week or so ago I decided I wanted to soften the look of my main guest room, which is themed as a 'Beach' room, to remind me of the sea that's now so very far away. It has been this rich turquoise since Dec' 2005, just after we moved in here and did all the original decorating. Above is the before photo' which would have been better if I had put the darned light on!

I saw a TV show where a designer had ragged over a darker colour with a lighter shade and decided to give that a go. Well I started ragging with a paler powder blue and instantly hated it! Not good, so I started scrubbing at it like a nutter with paper towel and stumbled upon exactly the look I was aiming for all along! LOL

I had bought a special glove with the rags attached and so I just started putting less of the glaze/paint mix on it and really rubbing it in to the wall in a circular motion. This way I didn't have to mess with the paper towels and the end result looks a bit like marble.

The reason it worked so well though, is that our wall already had a distinct texture to it, so the mix highlighted the texturising.

I decided to leave 2 walls in the original colour as accent walls, one is almost totally hidden by a bed wall unit and the other has a large double window. The Hubster and I both agree by doing this it really highlights the other 2 ragged walls. My vivid imagination also thinks it looks like the sea, with darker deeper water and then the foamy lighter water closer to shore ;-)

Anyway it was hard work but I am extremely chuffed with the end result and we think we will use this technique again in our sitting room, but in much softer colours. I should mention that when we moved in here the whole house was what us Brit's refer to as 'Magnolia' (rich cream). Now every single room is a different colour and we're not talking any of those 'hint of' colours, I like to see my colour!