I stenciled one small wall in our home to (cover my imperfect mudding job) add a pop of interest. But our house is old and like most old houses, the walls are not plumb.
Mandy, my sister-in-law at
sugarbeecrafts.com, made her dining room look very fancy by just stenciling her wall.
And it got me thinking how much interest stencils bring to a room!
Wallpaper is a pain and my mom stenciled a lot of furniture and random objects when I was a little girl. For those reasons, I thought that a wall in our house needed a good stenciling.
Luckily, said SIL had a few different stencils and offered to let me choose one to use in my home. I
loved her dining room wall, but when I got that stencil back to my house, it seemed too fancy for the little area that I was improving. Since our last name (supposedly means) 'one who keeps bees', I chose a hexagon pattern that is reminiscent of a parts of a beehive but did it in a light turquoise so it wasn't too bee-ish.
I also chose to stencil this wall because it was new, and I am not fantastic at mudding new sheetroc - the stencil covered any and all of the wall's imperfections!
Tools for Stenciling:
- stenciling brush (these have very stiff bristles and are usually rounded)
- paper towel
- newspaper
- paint, very slightly watered down
Stenciling Hints:
- Water down your paint just a very little bit. I take about a cup of paint and put around 2 Tbsp of water in it, then give it a stir (I've never measured, really, but I just turn on the faucet and let some water plop in - but I think it's about 2 Tbsp or a little over that).
- The paper towel is to dab your paint off a bit. Dip your brush into the paint, then give your brush a twist on your paper towel. Then you can continue with the stenciling.
- To stencil, keep your brush perpendicular to the surface your painting and "stamp" it.
- Be patient
- Stencil in order. i.e. Left to Right, then let it dry and the left to right again, etc.
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| As you can see, this was a new wall and I wanted it to stand out a little. |
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| My FIL showed me this little trick to cover imperfections on a new wall: mix sheetrock compound with your primer - about 1/2 and 1/2. Then just roll it on. |
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| The mixture. You have to roll it pretty fast and not go over the same spot too often or it will come out uneven. I was pretty nervous about trying it without Nate's dad here, but since I was covering it with stencil, it turned out that it didn't matter too much. |
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| Finished wall with first stripe of my paint color. |
So now to the stenciling:
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| I used spray glue to help the stencil adhere to the wall as well as painter's tape. |
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| For un-plumb walls, don't do it like this to "save time"! You will have to paint over it and re-do: be patient and wait for one side of the wall to dry, then do the area right next to it... |
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| ....otherwise, you end up with this! See how the two stenciled portions are too close together? |
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| Remember the instructions on stenciling? Don't get in a hurry and glob too much on your brush or say to yourself: "It will be ok if I don't dab it this time" because then you'll have to spend more time going back to 'fix' the unclean lines. |
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| Yes, go in order; left to right OR right to left Or up Or down, just be consistent and stay next to the place where you started. |
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| Much better! Here I waited for the one section on the right to dry, then moved on to the one in the center, and then the left and so on. Then I was able to start again on the far right side and move toward the left again. |
