Applying a finish to the faux marble (my take on it - an experiment)

I had matte varnish, gloss varnish and a bottle of satin varnish. Think the satin would have been the best choice but it was all dried up and had to be thrown away so I decided to go with the matte.

I put on two coats of matte varnish, letting it dry between coats. When the second coat was dry, I 'sanded' it with a piece of brown paper bag (just an ordinary lunch bag).

Added another two coats of matte varnish, sanding  with the brown paper after each coat was dry.

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 Although the brown paper bag sanding gave it a soft glow finish, I decided to try one coat of gloss and see what would happen. Disaster! The gloss varnish sort of pilled on the surface...not a good result.

So I took this nail buffer (six sides each with a different grit) from Dollarama and used the 4th side to sand off the layer of gloss varnish.

Then I added another two coats of matte varnish, again sanding with brown paper as each coat dried.

It has a mellow soft finish but don't know how realistic it is as I don't have any marble to compare it to.

If my satin varnish hadn't dried out, I think I would have been more pleased with the final finish.

But the brown paper worked well in lieu of the steel wool called for in Tina's instructions.

I'll be picking up the spray semi-gloss varnish and steel wool tomorrow and will use that on the table tops from the kit from Tina and I'll see how that goes.

A BIG job I now have ahead of me is to sort through all my paints and varnishes to get rid of all the ones that have dried out. That will probably clear out about half (75) of them 😢