If you've got a jar of cinnamon sitting in your kitchen and some black and brown acrylic paint in your craft stash, you have almost everything you need to make convincing faux rust. This tutorial shows you how to use just three ingredients — paint, cinnamon, and PVA glue — to create a raised, textured, genuinely rust-like finish on cardstock and paper pieces. I spent a while getting this wrong before I landed on what actually works, so the goal here is to help you skip straight past the fails.
What we cover
The tutorial walks through the full faux rust process — from mixing your paint base to applying cinnamon and glue, using a heat gun to create the bubbled texture, and understanding where the technique shines and where it struggles. After the technique demo, there's a full flip-through of a finished grunge-aesthetic junk journal where the rusted pieces are used in context, plus a quick breakdown of how the cover was constructed.
What you'll learn
How to mix a faux rust paint base using black and brown acrylic paint, including:
- Applying paint with a sponge so it covers unevenly — hints of color, not a solid coat
- Adding copper, teal, red, or silver accents for more variation if you want to go deeper into the rust palette
- Keeping the paint sparse so the cinnamon and glue texture can do the real work
How to apply cinnamon for texture and build The cinnamon goes on in concentrated spots rather than dusted evenly across the whole piece — because real rust accumulates in patches, not uniformly. You can press some of it in with your finger before the glue goes on, which helps it anchor where you want it.
How to use PVA glue to seal the texture and create bubbling, including:
- Dabbing glue on rather than brushing it, so the cinnamon doesn't just skid around
- Working one or two pieces at a time so the glue is still wet when the heat gun hits it
- Covering some of the cinnamon completely with glue and leaving some exposed — the covered areas bubble and fuse; the uncovered areas stay dry-looking, which adds to the variation
How to use a heat gun to develop the texture The heat causes the wet glue to bubble and raise, which is where the rust illusion really comes from. Pieces will curl as they dry and then flatten back out once fully dry — so don't panic when they start warping.
Why PVA glue is the right choice here — and what goes wrong with alternatives I tried gel medium and matte medium first. Both dried white and completely buried the rust effect. You need a glue that dries clear: standard PVA (like Mod Podge or wood glue) is what works.
How faux rust scales — and where it doesn't Smaller die-cut pieces in cardstock come out beautifully. Larger pieces are harder to manage: too much glue on a big surface gets away from you fast, and the texture doesn't translate as convincingly. This is a technique that rewards working small and in batches.
How to use faux rust pieces in a grunge-aesthetic junk journal The flip-through shows how three rusted pieces anchor the cover without overwhelming it — mixed with scrapbook paper, fabric, a small chain, and charms so the whole thing reads as grungy without tipping into muddy. Inside, the same balance plays out across pockets, signatures, and journaling spots using black thread, torn pages, repaired rips, and offcut layering.
How the journal cover was constructed from scratch, including:
- Three cardstock panels (front, back, spine) with a deliberate margin gap between them for a clean fold
- Wrapping fabric over the edges and covering the front and back panels with scrapbook paper to hide the folded seams
- Using brads to hold a chunky embellishment piece through the cover, then covering the brad tails with scrapbook paper on the inside
Tips & gotchas
Use PVA glue that dries clear — this is the one thing that will make or break the effect. Gel medium and matte medium both dry white and will bury everything you've built underneath. If your piece comes out looking opaque and dull, the glue is the first thing to check.
Don't apply glue to more than one or two pieces at a time. The whole point of the glue is to bubble with heat while it's still wet — if it dries before you get the heat gun on it, you lose the texture.
Go light on the glue for larger pieces. On small die-cut shapes you can be fairly generous; on bigger surfaces excess glue becomes hard to manage and tends to pool. Dab rather than brush, and stop before you think you need to.
If cinnamon isn't covered with glue on top, it won't bubble — it'll just sit there looking dry. That's not always wrong (the variation can look good), but if you want the raised, fused look, make sure glue goes over the cinnamon, not just under it.
Apply rust accumulation in spots, not all over. The pieces that looked most convincing next to my reference photo were the ones where I treated cinnamon the way real rust behaves — heavier in certain areas, light or absent in others.
Pieces will curl when the heat hits them. Let them dry fully and they'll flatten back out. Wear gloves — the glue, cinnamon, and paint combination gets messy, and a heat gun is a heat gun.
They work on journal covers as anchor pieces, tucked into pockets, used as tags, or scattered through signatures in a grunge-theme journal. The aesthetic pairs naturally with black thread stitching, torn and repaired pages, tea bag embellishments, and anything in the brown-black-copper palette. What I've found is that the key is restraint — a few rusted pieces against cleaner layers makes the whole thing read as intentional. Let it take over completely and it just looks muddy. Get the balance right and it looks like something that's been sitting in a drawer for forty years, in the best possible way.
