Anyone have experience matching sand?

I've got a pretty big patch in this house that they had to pull out for plumbing. It was built in the 50s and they used some kind of sand in the paint or the plaster. I've tried to match this before once, I mixed some sand into the paint, it didn't come out awesome. Just curious if this is something that should be tackled during the texturing phase or if I should ask this question in Painting.