Painting Over Spackle: Is it possible?
Adding kolor to this piece using spray paint from the hardware store.
When creating spackling art, you’ll notice that the material itself is very fragile to the touch before you go ahead and seal the piece. This is because spackle is technically made to be used in small quantities to fill holes. Boring, right? But because of the makeup of this material, from my personal experience, it’s extremely difficult to paint when you use it in large quantities! But is painting over spackle even possible?
Here are the different paints I’ve tried using and the results I’ve had:
Acrylic Paint
Acrylic paint is really fun to work with, and I was excited to try painting my pieces with a paint that comes in every color you can possibly imagine! But to my surprise spackling doesn’t hold up well when painted over with acrylics. What happened exactly? Well, the paint ended up seeping into the spackle almost like a sponge. At first, you might think, “this doesn’t look too bad!”, but once the paint has dried it becomes a bit patchy.
Another challenge I found with using acrylic paint over spackle is that it’s extremely difficult to get in all of the little crevices. Now, if you create a spackling piece that doesn’t have a lot of 3D texture, you might not have that problem. But if you do try to use acrylics, make sure you look at the piece from all angles to get every inch of the piece, otherwise, you’ll have white spots everywhere.
Spray Paint
Now, THIS is fun! When I first tried spray painting my spackling artwork, I was a bit nervous about how it would turn out because you can’t be super precise with spray paint (unless you’re a spray paint expert which I’m certainly not!). Unlike acrylic paint, I don’t love that it’s challenging to find spray paint in a variety of colors. But hey, after the uninspiring results of using acrylics, I thought what the heck let’s try it.
I bought some spray paint at Lowes and chose a fun pink color to try out. I also bought a tarp that way the spray paint wouldn’t go all over the place. I aggressively shook the can and then gently started spraying the piece. At first, I was like “this could either turn out really great or terribly bad” but after a few minutes, I instantly knew that this was it. You just have to be sure to seal your piece afterwards so that it doesn’t chip.
Gesso + Acrylic Paint
THIS is the holy grail of painting over your spackling and here’s why…
Gesso is a material that is typically uses to prime surfaces for painting. But I recently discovered that you can also use it to prime your spackling before painting it. Gesso is a nice neutral white color and I like to simply paint it over my spackling. Once it’s dried, you’ll notice that your spackling will be much harder! This is exactly what you want when you go to paint over it. Once the Gesso is dry, you can now paint over it with any kind of paint you’d like. I typically use acrylics but you can also go ahead and spray paint over it!
All in all, painting on spackle is a lot of fun regardless of whether it turns out exactly how you want it. Painting can be therapeutic and is a way to express your creativity through color! I’m going to keep experimenting with and will update this blog as I do, but I hope this was helpful for your next spackling art adventure with paint!
Want to start making spackling art but don’t know where to begin? Check out my FREE spackling art guide with all the products and steps I take to make the art!
