The most easy approach is to have a wood piece of artwork and sand it down to make the shade look faded.

After the furniture is painted or stained, just use pieces of sandpaper to rub away the surface and make portions of the furniture seem antiqued. Just don’t wear a lot of this surface away, or the furniture may wind up damaged or visually unappealing.

Some basic tricks that I have noticed for furniture that is distressing is to hit it with light chains and to wash at it.