AN EASIER WAY TO STENCIL

My sister stencilled her dining room wall before Christmas, and it turned out amazing.  Look at the difference in this room… here is before/after view:

OK, so she also swapped out the dark curtains for white, added a sparkly sunburst mirror and a couple of pictures to the wall.  But the really exciting thing about the transformation is the way that she stencilled the wall.  Stencilling can be very messy, and the stencils themselves can be expensive.

The secret to making this project easy and inexpensive came from The Lovely Cupboard, where Heather used Sharpie paint pens to stencil her wall.

The paint pens are so easy to use.  The finish has a bit of shine to it, which might be hard to see in the picture, but it is really pretty in person.

Here are the dets:

1. Save yourself some money by designing your own stencil template.  Carolee sketched her stencil out on parchment paper.  The trick to making the design symmetrical is to sketch one half (or quarter), fold your paper in half, and trace the other half.

2. Transfer the design to bristol board or other heavy duty paper, and cut it out.

3. We used a laser level to make sure we kept things aligned vertically.  Stick the stencil to the wall with tape, and trace the design lightly with pencil.  You will be surprised at how quickly the process goes, it seemed like no time before the whole wall was covered!  It only took a couple of hours total (including making the stencil) to get to this point.

* note *  … you will probably be tempted to skip the ‘pencil’ step and just start tracing with the Sharpie, but DON’T do it!  It’s easy to slip while tracing.  Pencil is erasable, and the Sharpie pen isn’t.

4. Once the design is pencilled in, go over it with the Sharpie paint pen.  It will probably take two coats to get sufficient coverage.  This part was fun, and even easy enough for husbands and kids!  Ha!

 

5. This was an instant gratification project for sure!  It took and afternoon plus an evening.  There was very little mess, and the only expense was the cost of 2 Sharpie pens!

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