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chrisatoledo

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Wonderful informative tutorial and you bathroom looks vey good. There are some great pointers there and definitely a keeper tutorial .

Myself  I hate subway tiles, they remind me too much of public toilets in the UK which make me cringe a bit, although your bathroom didn't have that effect on me LOL. 

The tutorial was excellent, thank you so much.

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I didn't know Chris Toledo was a member of this board. I've admired his work on many occasions just surfing around the net. If you're still here, Chris, hello! You're so talented and I love your work! :)

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27 minutes ago, havanaholly said:

Toni, you would be amazed at who some of our members are.

I'll bet I would, Holly. So much talent in such a small corner of the internet. I'm so happy that I found this forum.

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11 hours ago, Sable said:

The walls turned out fabulously, how did you do that floor?

@Sable The floor is just a regular small hex plastic floor. I painted it with a buff color - sealed it and then drew in the black details with a mechanical pencil and sealed it again. I tried painting on the 'black' design but it looked too sloppy and uneven to my eye.

11 hours ago, havanaholly said:

Didn't that bathtub turn out glorious!

@havanahollyHolly, that's the bathtub from a partial Chrysnbon kit I got on Ebay, I liked it because it was old and kind of yellowed to a creamy color, I just painted the outside a dark color. However, there are parts of the hardware (faucets, etc.) missing from the sink and toilet so I bought a new set and am going to attempt to age it using Chris's methods.

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1 hour ago, Keifer said:

Excellent job on everything!

Thank you Keith, here are a few remarks on the experience:

I first used 1/16 balsa wood sheets (Chris used veneer). I sanded them as smooth as possible 400 then 600 grade. I then painted some sheets with several coats (3 coats sanded in between coats) a pale cream mixed with white and some others with the same paint mix but with slightly more white paint added to create the illusion of the firing diversity of older tiles..Another of the sheets I painted pure black for the trim.

The Envirolite resin is easy to prepare and apply but it is MESSY.

Because of the water-based paint (leftover household paint) the balsa board warped quite a bit. I didn't attempt to straighten them (I was eager to finish). The result of my impatience was that the resin pooled in the dips and created different thicknesses in the end product. The effect was great though! A glassy smooth surface. 

When it came to cutting the tiles it was difficult, because of the different thicknesses this caused a lot of uneveness (I tried with craft knife and also scissors). Deciding that I would not get the effect I wanted, I decided to try something else. I had enough left over to try it again.

This time round, I used a thin stock card thinking that the paint plus the resin would be the right thickness.

I took the precaution of tracing a grid on the back of the paper to use as a cutting guide. - this proved to be a good idea :)

Again I painted 3 coats (in all, 5 pages of A4 card - 4 light 1 black). Again this warped the paper so I placed these under a large heavy pile of magazines overnight to flatten them as much as possible, then I used masking tape on the very edges to tape the paper down on to a large unfolded cardboard box I was working on (remember, messy!). I made sure there was no dust on the paper  - or dog hairs ! - and mixed up a new batch of resin. I poured equal-ish amounts in the center each sheet thne, working quickly, I spread the resin right to and over the edges using an old hotel key card, much like icing a cake - don't 'work' this to muck! After 15 minutes, as per the instructions, I exhaled over the pages to eliminate the little bubbles which had risen to the surface - it works but gave me a headache :). I left it all to dry undisturbed in a spare room for 72 hours to make sure the product was completely cured.

Again, there was a slight pooling and thickness difference but much less and the whole thing was easy to cut using large scissors and the grid on the back. There was wastage because of the masking taped edges but very little.

Some of the tiles were thicker than others but most were pretty even. The thicker ones I put aside to use elsewhere (perhaps as a splashback in the kitchen). The others I glued onto another sheet of stock card butting them side by side with no space. I 'grouted' them by smearing spackle all over with my fingers pressing into the tiny spaces in between tiles. The grout is easily wiped of because of the glossy surface which I then buffed with a cloth.

For the skirting (baseboard?) I used strips of the earlier balsa batch as this was just cut into strips as Chris did and scored to imitate individual tiles. The benefit of this was that it was thicker than the wall of tiles which 'sat' on top of it.  The top trim were strips cut from the stock card batch. 

I coloured the top edge of the last trim strip with a black sharpie to hide the white cut edge.

All in all I am satisfied with the result. Next time I will use more resin to get a little more thickness in order to get the 'beveled edge' of each tile. Also, next time I would cut the lower top trim strip a little thinner than the top one. 

This is a good product that I will use for other stuff again.

This was only made possible by the great explanations and inspiration given by Chris - I encourage you to try for yourself. )

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46 minutes ago, chrisatoledo said:

This turned out spectacular!!!! Love Love Love!!! 

Oh hello Chris and thank you, your comment means a lot to me. I have been going through your Instagram and Facebook sites and admiring it all! Fantastic work. Also, through you I learned about Pat and Noel Thomas - wonderful people, I'm so glad their blog is still online I have learned so much from it. Thanks again for your tutorial!

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1 hour ago, Sweet said:

I just ordered the Envirolite resin...

A bit difficult to find the stuff in my country but I found out that fishermen who like to make their own 'jerkbaits' use this stuff.

1

Next time I'm ordering a large box of this stuff - it has multiple uses.

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@Sweet . On the second try I used about half of the mixture (I ordered the 8oz/ 236ml package) with which I covered 5 pages of A4 cardstock. All in all, cardstock + primer + 3 thin layers of paint + resin, is only about 3 mm thick. This gives nice rigid tiles which are easy to cut with scissors. However, I think next time I'll use more resin or less paper i.e half the mixture to 4 pages instead of 5 as I think this will give more tranparency. If I were you, I'd experiment with a small dose to get familiar with the product. Also I followed the instructions to the letter. Cover a wide are to work on as this stuff really sticks. I just ordered more :)

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I had great fun following this tutorial. Both of crisatoledo's and WestPaces's remarkes helped.

I used cardboard for it, followed the instructions carefully and now I have a bunch of tiles for my mini-shower to come.
It is too bad I can not make the shower now, I first have to finish the ceiling and the floor of the second level.

Now I can make black and white floor-tiles (20 mm x 20 mm) and tiles for the wall (10 mm x 10 mm).

Edited by Sweet
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36 minutes ago, Sweet said:

I had great fun following this tutorial. Both of crisatoledo's and WestPaces's remarkes helped.

I used cardboard for it, followed the instructions carefully and now I have a bunch of tiles for my mini-shower to come.
It is too bad I can not make the shower now, I first have to finish the ceiling and the floor of the second level.

Now I can make black and white floor-tiles (20 mm x 20 mm) and tiles for the wall (10 mm x 10 mm).

Great to hear! Do you have pics? I too was planning on black and white tiles for the kitchen, I am also going to try it on a printout of some tiles I saw in a magazine. Great stuff!

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7 hours ago, Sweet said:

This is the one in my gallery.

Good idea! Using print, stick it on some cardstock and apply the mixture!
Maybe I will try these:

https://albarello.nl/delfts-blauw/

Love delft tiles! When I travelled on KLM recently I kept the box containing cookies they gave out as it had delft pictures on it. I thought maybe I could use it in my dollhouse one day :)

 

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