Easy Fresco

Textural finishing is a hugely popular style for home decoration, and with the many innovative products now available in stores, the techniques are easy to master. All it takes is a texturing medium, paint, and simple antiquing skills to transform furniture, walls, or artifacts into custom creations! Beautifully illustrated throughout with color photography, this wonderful resource demonstrates step-by-step the variety of effects that you can use to enliven the surfaces of your home. Update an old weathered coffee table to look like leather or reptile, or take canvas, decoupage prints, and texture compound  to produce fantastic wall hangings. Thirty impressive projects range from cabinets to tabletops; many would look at home in a centuries-old house, while others incorporate contemporary colors for an eye-catching modern twist.

Textural finishing is a hugely popular style for home decoration, and with the many innovative products now available in stores, the techniques are easy to master. All it takes is a texturing medium, paint, and simple antiquing skills to transform furniture, walls, or artifacts into custom creations! Beautifully illustrated throughout with color photography, this wonderful resource demonstrates step-by-step the variety of effects that you can use to enliven the surfaces of your home. Update an old weathered coffee table to look like leather or reptile, or take canvas, decoupage prints, and texture compound to produce fantastic wall hangings. Thirty impressive projects range from cabinets to tabletops; many would look at home in a centuries-old house, while others incorporate contemporary colors for an eye-catching modern twist.

Daniel Lombardo - Library Journal

Despite the title, this is really a book on how to decorate a variety of surfaces in the style of fresco. Ferrara offers a detailed guide to re-creating the warm, weathered look of ancient frescoes on canvas wall hangings, trays, tea boxes, tables, and cabinet doors. She introduces a number of texture and crackle products and texturing tools, which she then combines with stenciling and decoupage. Inspired by her grandfather's farmhouse in southern Italy, Ferrara studied traditional Italian decorative painting in Florence and gilding throughout Europe and has been teaching fine art and decorative painting for more than 20 years. Recommended for crafters; those seeking training in the actual art of fresco should look at Sarah Hocombe's superb Fresco Painting for Home & Garden.