Have you done decorative finishes before? I'd look up tutorials on YouTube or the like. Perhaps there are classes in a shop near you?

I did that semi-professionally in the 80’s while in school. It bought a lot of school textbooks.

I’d suggest starting with something much smaller. Something that size is a real challenge, even for a professional. You need to work with drying extenders, glazes, and a bunch of sea sponges and feathers. All while up and down on a ladder trying to keep the color flow natural looking.

A small night table or flea market find is perfect to start with. Plaid craft paints are also the perfect size amount of paint for a small project. Figure out your palette, which is usually a base coat color and 2-4 accent colors.

Paint the piece your base coat and allow to dry. Sponge roller on the un-tinted glaze mixed with extender over the base coat. Pour some glaze in a paper plate, and place the different accent colors around the plate in a spiral. Place the sponge in the plate lightly and touch to the piece.

This is where you need to practice. A lot. Some people never get the knack of making it look natural. The glaze on the piece gives you blendability and a longer open time. You don’t want to let your sponge get too muddy or dry. If things start to look wrong, either wipe it off with a wet sponge and start over with a new basecost, or let dry and do the same. Practice, practice, practice.

Once you have the basic marbled background, the veining is next. That’s what the feather is for. You want a limpish feather that you twist and twirl through your veining colors and glaze. That should be loaded up from a mini swirl on your paper plate palette. The veining is the hardest to get natural looking, so again, practice a lot. Once it’s done, a clear acrylic coat in the sheen of your choice is applied. I always did semi gloss. Avoid anything oil based. It yellows.

If you want to happen without the weeks of practice, call a professional faux finisher. In today’s money, what I charged for 2 9’ columns would be about $1500. But I was a poor stupid uninsured college student doing it on the side, not a true licensed business. I shudder to think what would have happened had I fallen off that ladder!

I would consider using marble contact paper instead. It will likely be easier.

We do this professionally and suggest that yelp has some videos that will be helpful to learn how to do this.