Author: Leslie_Pease, Contributing Editor

Decorative painting takes time and patience. The most important thing to do is to have fun. I would like to share with you, my technique and learning experience for decorative painting with acrylics, on a mailbox. The mailbox I have chosen to paint is an old, rusted pale blue mailbox with a missing handle, that I wanted to recycle. Since it will be for my home and our last name is Pease, I wanted to paint fun vegetables with LOTS of peas. As you read this article, you will see photos and a paragraph helping you understand what I am doing. Because this demonstration is about painting a mailbox and not a "How-To" on painting vegetables, I didn't include the photographs for all the layers for each vegetable painted.

I apologize for some of the poor quality in my photos, but I hope you will enjoy the article as much as I did creating it!

These are the supplies I used. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the mailbox in the original poor condition. My palette for this project was limited to these colors: * White * Stove Paint Flat Black * Raw Sienna * Burnt Sienna * Ultramarine Blue * Hookers Green Hue Permanent * Cadmium Yellow Medium * Cadmium Yellow Light * Cadmium Red Medium * Naphtol Crimson Polyurethane The brushes I used are old and worn out brushes, ranging from round to flat, and one new liner brush for the detail work.

My first step was to make the blue mailbox black. I used a paint that is used on wood stoves. Learning the hard way, I DO NOT recommend using this method. It's best to start off with a mailbox which is the color you want for a background.

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