I want to paint a circle

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on cement.

I'm going to powerwash and repaint my cement patio, and have tons of ideas for designs. Unfortunately they all involve curves.

I was able to do the harlequin pattern I have now by firmly pressing down masking tape to use as borders. I was able to get a nice sharp edge.

Stencils don't work, they don't adhere closely enough to prevent paint seeping under. Besides I may want a fairly big circle for a sun or something.

I can pencil on a circle using a compass, but what can I put around the circumference to use as a guide.

Something I can apply, like a tube of toothpaste, wipe the edges clean, paint inside the border, then be able to remove.

Basically I need a mallable substance that is impermeable to paint.

For all I know toothpaste could work.

Ideas?

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@chai2,

Maybe you could make a paper pattern, and weight down the edges while painting around it with a general purpose grease. The grease and overspray should wash right off, after the design is dry and cured. You would have to do your painting with spray paint. A brush just wouldn't work here.

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@chai2,

What about caulk? Or rubber cement? That oughtta work.

P.S. 50 yr old women are not grils. Okay?

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Use a carpenter's grease pencil or wax pencil. The pencil I remember a carpenter friend having looked like a big crayon about 1 inch thick and had a greasy orange color. I've seen it used in tire stores to mark tires with the prices and car dealers used them to mark the prices on the windshield of the used cars in the lot.

Draw the line for the circle in a thickness that gives you enough of a margin, do your painting and let it dry. Then come back and scrape off the grease/wax.

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@roger,

Grease!

Grease is the word, the word that I heard!

ok, paper pattern, with a thin coat of grease on it.

or, can this all purpose grease just be applied to the outline of the circle, since the paint won't seep through it?

Actually this is very close to a concept I was thinking of. When you dye your hair, if you're sloppy, you just put a line of vaseline around your hairline, so the dye won't touch your skin on your forehead, cheeks etc.

Why couldn't you use a brush?

I have some of those round, blunt end brushes from an art store. They are what I used to paint by the masking tape edges. You don't use the brush to stroke on the paint, but rather apply it by carefully tapping the blunt edge to the cement. Then, you fill in the bigger area with a regular brush.

I really don't want to use spray paint, due to the limitations of color.

I'm really picky about color.

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@Butrflynet,

I just searched for something like it on the internet and don't find anything similar. It must not be in use anymore.

I'll keep looking and post a link if I find anything.

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@Mame,

Mame wrote:

What about caulk? Or rubber cement? That oughtta work.

P.S. 50 yr old women are not grils. Okay?

oh yeah baby!

the phone lines are all lit up.

see, that's what I didn't know, if caulk/rubber cement can be applied and removed.

It won't take up the paint that is under it? Meaning the base color already applied?

I may be 50 on the outside, but I'm pure 49 on the inside.

3 Replies

@Butrflynet,

Ah ha! I was using the wrong search term. It's called a lumber crayon not a carpenter's crayon. You can probably get some from Home Depot. Here's a link to a bunch and a picture of what I was talking about:

http://images.grainger.com/B282_27/images/products/small/SMALL-5W542.JPG

http://www.grainger.com/1/3/lumber-crayon

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@chai2,

rubber cement will just peel off, but the beauty of it is that it will sink into the lows of the cement/concrete. It peels off and rolls up like a rubber ball but it should provide a definite surficial line for your purposes.

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@chai2,

and caulk can be peeled off, too.... think of your shower. no problem.

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@chai2,

Maybe caulk/RTV silicone. Not sure rubber cement will come up when you're done.

Don't paint with a brush inside the grease outline because the brush WILL contact the grease, and ruin the paint job. The grease is just a messy stencil. Anyway, a brush is going to get paint inside any irregularities in the concrete. Spray paint is likely to stick to the high spots, but not in the deepest parts of the grain.

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Another alternative if you don't do it on a windy day is to use either sand or flour. Temporarily tape your template in place and drizzle around the perimeter of it with a thick coat of either sand or flour. Using a funnel to direct a stream of sand/flour around the edge of the template would probably work best. Make a wide margin of the sand/flour. Carefully remove the template so as to not disturb the edge on the line of sand/flour and then paint your circle. You could even use spray paint in this case because the sand/flour will absorb the over-spray and can be swept away with the sand/flour.

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wow, great ideas all!

I like the idea of the wax pencil, what do you scrape up the wax with when you're done? A putty knife?

Embarrassed

mame, I've never caulked anything, but if you say it comes up, I believe you.

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@chai2,

Off hand why do you not consider painting the whole area the color you wish your circles to be and then using cardboard cut into the figures you wish cover those areas and then paint the background color on?

Seem far simpler then what you are planning on doing.

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You used tape before with success. You could try it again.
Mask the area with short straight pcs. of tape, just around the edge... Outline with tape. To get the curve, take a razor knife and cut the inside edge of the tape.
Remember that it is easier to make curves with the way your arm pivots in it's socket. Don't work against the way your body moves.

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Off hand why do you not consider painting the whole area the color you wish your circles to be and then using cardboard cut into the figures you wish cover those areas and then paint the background color on?

Seem far simpler then what you are planning on doing.

because, as I've said, the surface of any cement is to uneven to paint to get a clean line by using a stencil (piece of cardboard)

cardboard will not meld into the tiny nooks and dips, and you will find much paint where you don't want it to be.

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@caribou,

caribou wrote:

You used tape before with success. You could try it again.
Mask the area with short straight pcs. of tape, just around the edge... Outline with tape. To get the curve, take a razor knife and cut the inside edge of the tape.
Remember that it is easier to make curves with the way your arm pivots in it's socket. Don't work against the way your body moves.

I did think about that, and it's still on my list of possibilities.

I'm not too certain I'd be able to cut that well with a razor, knowing my abilities.

However, what I'm going to do is take all the suggestions that most appeal to me, and try them all on some of those 12x12 cement paver stone you can get at lowes/home despot.

I like the caulk idea very much, as well as the wax pencil.
I will try the razor cutting of tape too.

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@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

Stencils don't work, they don't adhere closely enough to prevent paint seeping under. Besides I may want a fairly big circle for a sun or something.

I've used stencils on this kind of a surface before. It works fine if you make all of your motions downward, with this kind of a brush:

http://images.asia.ru/img/alibaba/photo/51446165/Oil___Stencil_Brush__Cylinder_.jpg

The bigger the better.

Just don't use that much paint on the brush at a time, and then stipple the heck out of it (basically stab at the surface repeatedly. Therapeutic too).

1 Reply

@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

chai2 wrote:
Stencils don't work, they don't adhere closely enough to prevent paint seeping under. Besides I may want a fairly big circle for a sun or something.

I've used stencils on this kind of a surface before. It works fine if you make all of your motions downward, with this kind of a brush:

The bigger the better.

Just don't use that much paint on the brush at a time, and then stipple the heck out of it (basically stab at the surface repeatedly. Therapeutic too).

That's exactly the type of brush I use, using a light tap tap tapping, as I said above. But again, it does not work on stencils placed on cement. Perhaps your cement was more even.

believe me, I know.

When doing the diamond pattern, I began by using a thin stencil, but the minute dips in the cement cannot be closed off by the stencil. All I accomplished was a mess that I had to paint over. Fortunatley it didn't take long to realize stencils would not work.

Masking tape did the trick, because I was able to press the tape firmly to the constantly changing service.

wax, caulk would do the same thing.

It's been rainy here, but when it clears up, I'll do my testing.

1 Reply

@chai2,

Darn.

Quote:

When doing the diamond pattern, I began by using a thin stencil, but the minute dips in the cement cannot be closed off by the stencil.

My idea is that the dips don't need to be closed off really -- the stencil just prevents the paint from getting there when you're stabbing at it from above.

But if you've tried it and it didn't work, oh well. (You didn't have much paint on the brush? The idea is to just get the paint where the brush actually touches the surface, without any splooshing/ flowing sideways afterwards. You could just do the labor intensive stuff [dry-ish brush means more stabbing to get saturated color] around the edges, then fill in willy-nilly.)

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I want to paint a circle

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