A Tutorial: How to Paint a Camouflage Bookcase

And now for something completely different...a few posts ago, I blogged about creating a dream room for a little boy who is battling cancer. Read about it here and here. His mom approached me to create a camouflage bookshelf so I gladly said "yes!" (Not that I ever painted a camo bookshelf before.)

I started with this: a blonde wood bookcase with laminate shelves (below). Now, on to the tutorial:

1. I painted a base color of cocoa brown with Behr Paint and Primer (and yes, I tried to paint the laminate shelves, however, I could scrape the paint off with my fingernail so Plan B).

I asked my new buddy, Frank, (the man who made the ammo/helmet lamp) to cut two new shelves for Joey's bookshelf. Frank accepted the challenge and finished in one day. Thanks Frank! After two coats, the base coat was ready for camo!

2. Using the bedding pattern (sort of) from Joey's room, I sketched out a camo pattern on the outside of the bookshelves with chalk.

3. Then, I randomly marked where the colors should go. I worked with four colors -- brown, greenish brown (more like army green), tan and a lighter tan. Here's what it looked like (kind of like paint-by-numbers).

4. Leaving the base coat intact, I started painting with the lighter colors, painting them one at a time and letting them dry before moving onto the next color. I had to paint two coats on the lighter colors.

5. Then, I touched up any areas that needed touching up.

6. After it was finished, I stood back, looked at it, and added random base color to where I thought it needed a break in color -- where there was too much tan together.

7. After it dried, I added a coat of polyurethane (two coats to the top and the shelves) and well, here are the results! Sorry, couldn't get a picture of the whole thing in Joey's room (the rain outside made picture taking too dark and it looked bad with a flash!)

Linking to;
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Primitive and Proper
Miss Mustard Seed