HOW TO STAIN SMALL OBJECTS IN MINUTES

ByWritten by Laura Nuss August 4, 2024

I love a good hack! My family would say I hack most recipes. It’s true; following a recipe is so conventional. I created this hack on the fly when I had to stain multiple wood embroidery hoops for these orbs. I had a paintbrush, deadline and I needed to find a way how to stain small objects.

There was more stain on my hands than on the embroidery hoops. It was more labor-intensive than I anticipated; technically there are four sides to each hoop and the area around the hardware.

It was a messy process and each hoop required additional coats and touchups.

Staining each embroidery hoop one by one was slower than waiting for a load of towels to dry… while standing in front of the dryer. It was a brain drain technique.

This hack shows how to stain lots of objects in minutes.

I loved this hack when I painted dozens of cabinet pulls without incident, meaning they did not wobble and smudge the freshly spray painted cabinet pulls.

STEPS TO STAIN SMALL OBJECTS

I used an oversized aluminum tray
Disasembled a shipping box to place under aluminum tray
Poured just enough stain into the shallow aluminum tray
Then dunk the embroidery hoops into the tray- like dunking an Oreo cookie into a glass of milk.

This technique is perfect for small or odd-shaped objects. The stain adhered to the sides and edges of the hoop. The stain reached the nooks and crannies around the hoop’s hardware where the paintbrush could not reach.

This stain hack was a great way to stain small objects.