Further Tips on Making the Folk Art Walking Stick-Photo

I wanted to show the color change to the walking stick once I stained it with antiquing medium.  I have placed an unstained stick of locust wood beside it so you can see the depth of the color change. 

For this walking stick I used a clear antiquing medium mixed one to one with burnt umber.  You can generally buy a pre-mixed antiquing medium and not have to mix your own.  However, my craft store has changed ownership and now they are now carrying different products.  Instead of trekking to another store in search of my usual product, I decided to experiment.

I always test my materials on a piece of scrap wood first.   The burnt umber mixture was my second test.  My first choice of color to add to the stain had too much red in it.  If I had put that color on the stick I would have been really dissatisfied.  I can't stress this enough.  Test your materials for color and compatibility on scraps of the same type of wood you are using for your project.  It has to be the same type of wood because different types of wood can look completely different using the same stains.   Compatibility of materials can also be an issue.  Sometimes oil based and acrylic based products will not work together.  In some cases the top material can flake off.  In other cases, the top material ends up obscuring the layer beneath it.  You don't know how the products will act together until you test it.

My Wild Rose walking stick has three coats of the antiquing medium/burnt umber mixture on it.  This was followed by four coats of indoor/outdoor satin finish polyurethane varnish.   It gives the stick a nice patina without being too dark.  The coats of antiquing mixture also slightly toned down the bright rose colors giving it a more natural dusty rose look.  It may have been hard to tell from photographs, but the rose color was a little bright. 

Some people have wondered why I did not use regular wood stain.  I could have, maybe.  Once again, it is a matter of testing materials.  It may or may not have worked, and wood stain is more expensive than a small bottle of antiquing medium.  If I had decided to use a wood stain, I may have had to stain some areas and left others unstained so I could paint it.  If I had decided to stain the stick and paint over it, I would have had to do a long term test to see if the paint would flake off over time.  A walking stick has a long life.  I want my walking stick to look nice for the long run.