In my attempts of making my home more "almost white" I recently repainted our master bedroom and added stencil detailing. I am so excited to share this with you today because it is absolutely stunning! Plus one of you lucky ducks has the opportunity to win a stencil to beautify a room in your home as well!
I was a little nervous going into this project. I had never stenciled before and was not sure it it would come out well. Plus I also feared whether I would like having our entire room stenciled. But all of my anxieties were proven wrong. It was super easy. I absolutely love it. And I now want to stencil more rooms in our home!
What you will need:
-Stencils: Mine is Rachel's Garden Allover Stencil courtesy of Cutting Edge Stencils
-Paper plate for rolling paint on
-Small paint roller
-Paper towel for blotting paint roller
There are other supplies shown but I didn't end up needing all of them.
*Cutting Edge Stencils also offers a very helpful how-to video that is much more informational than I am going to be! wink.
I first measured around the room to try to get everything perfect and precise. That proved to not be very successful. But the number one thing I learned about stenciling was that if you are willing to just go with it and not have everything perfect, you are more likely to have a less than perfect but still stunning stenciled wall.
I also have to mention that another huge factor going into this is that I picked a color of paint to stencil the wall that was only about a shade darker than the wall color. The stencil is very subtle but still noticeable. But it is much more forgiving because you do not see every single imperfection.
The stencil is supposed to be lined up right next to each other but I somehow missed that and connected the stencil to the end of the plastic and not with the stencil. A mistake that ended up working well because it allowed for the stencil to be more spaced out which I like and gave me more wiggle room to eye ball things when it came to stenciling corners as well as connecting the very first stencil with the last stencil (which I purposefully placed behind our bedroom door so it was not very noticeable).
So you basically tape up your stencil. Roll your roller in paint. Roll some of the paint off on the paper towel and then roll over the stencil. The paint dries pretty quickly so you can move fairly fast.
I chose to go all the way around the room with a first top row so that I made sure the spacing worked for going all the way around the room. Seeing the partial stencil on the walls started easing my fears...
It ended up working well that each wall only had room for one row of stencils in the corner. It was not perfectly matching with the rest of the wall but the fact that every wall had this made it barely noticeable.
You do not have to put very much pressure to get the paint rolled on. The longer you roll the more consistent your rolling will become. Here is an example of unequal rolling pictured below. But as I said, in real life you barely notice. It is good enough for me!
You can also see on the left side of the left stencil below that it is supposed to connect with a stencil right next to it. Again, no biggie. You don't notice. I am just showing you that it can be fantastic even if not perfect. But take in consideration that if you use bolder colors you may have to be more picky. There were a few stencils I messed up on and it was pretty easy to just roll over it with my wall paint and do it over. Lots of trial and error but is easy to fix.
The final product in my still empty room. It took me the majority of my day to finish the room but it was well worth it. Imagine utter excitement behind that lens as I soaked in my day's work.
Since then, the room has been put back together. Curtains hung, bed made, furniture in place. But it is the utter simplicity that the stencils have brought to the room that is keeping me from accessorizing it. I imagine I will figure out what I want to add but for now I am taking in the beauty of the stencils. All by itself, I am constantly wowed by it. A minimalists dream. A perfect room without a lot of fuss.
Our room is pretty small so the best full view is from the reflection of the mirror.
I am a bit blurry...but happy nonetheless!
The only accessory at the moment is this mirror but still not sure about it yet.
The goal for this room was for it to feel hotel luxurious. Patterned walls and lush bedding make our room an oasis to rest our heads at the end of the day.
Here are the paint colors rundown:
Wall: the wall color was tricky to get the right shade of greyish-white-beige. I started with willow springs and it was not brown enough so I used the leftover paint from our dining room and then tinted it even darker with a sample of flagstone I had. You could say I was determined to make it work without buying another can of paint!
-32 oz. Valspar Asiago (same as dining room color)
-32 oz. Olympic Willow Springs
-about 10 tablespoons of Martha Stewart Flagstone
Stencil: Valspar Woodrow Wilson Putty
What seemed like a scary risk to take was well worth the work and anxiety. For a little bit of money and a little bit more of patience you can easily transform a room into a wow-worthy place!
Thanks to Cutting Edge Stencils (who also has a blog worth checking out!), one lucky reader is going to win a stencil up to a $50 value (open to US residents only). You pick a stencil and they cover the shipping for free! Yay!
If you are reading in a reader or via email click on over to enter:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
