New Faux Bois Technique: Bad Quality Spray Paint & Serendipity

This post could also be called Even Cheap, Crappy Quality Spray Paint Can Be Beautiful.  It technically isn't faux bois since it's real wood grain... but I don't even know how I'd go about trying to create this on purpose.  

With faux bois being so popular, I was delighted when this happened by total accident.

I am working on several Halloween projects.  In the process, I stumbled onto a really cool paint technique, and I have NO idea why it's working or even if I can duplicate it, but I definitely wanted to show you guys, because I think it's So. Dang. Cool.   For one of the projects I've been working on (which you'll see in a day or two) I needed to do a base coat of silver on a piece of plywood and then a top coat of black.

I didn't prime the plywood, but I used a high quality silver spray paint (Krylon Metallic Silver spray paint) and I sprayed on a nice, even layer.

Even though it was nice and even coverage, you could still see the wood grain because I hadn't sanded it first.  It was rather rough, but that was OK for my purposes.

I used super-duper-cheap-as-can-be black spray paint over the top.

The cheap black paint seemed to be absorbed immediately into parts of the wood grain.  I am convinced that is the cheap (and I'm assuming, watery) paint that is the cause of this, because I tried this with a high quality black spray paint and that one covered beautifully.  Cheap paint must just soak into the wood.

I don't know how it happened, and I kinda don't care how it happened, I just hope it'll happen again.  (Like a good hair day...)
 

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