Tutorial Tuesday: The best wall since Pink Floyd

Happy Tuesday, all. 

Today, I'll share my tips and tricks for my awesome wall stencil project. I'll end this with a review of the product I used. 

The tools:

Paint, small foam roller, paint tray and the stencil (stencil is hiding because it is clear...)

I thought it was easier to start in a corner. I lined up the stencil with the corner as my starting point. I also used an iPhone app (iHandy Level) to make sure I was level. I used blue tape to paint it up and make sure I was secure.

Then, I loaded up my roller:

Not too much paint, but roll it around to make sure it's evenly coated.

This is the most important step: ROLL OVER A PAPER TOWEL. Seriously. This will save you a lot of pain and anguish. Yes, you will go through a lot of paper towels. Sorry, mother nature.

Now, the fun part. Roll over your stencil LIGHTLY. Don't press hard. If you press hard you will get nasty bleeding outside the stencil. Ew. 

Gentle.

You may notice that great grooving in my wall. That was my nightmare. I was painting over old wood paneling. I used a very lightly coated fluffy paint brush to get in those groves. 90% of my time was spent making sure I didn't bleed over the stencil. 

Yeah, it was as annoying as it sounds.

When the stencil is done, time to move on to the next row. I waited a little while until the paint was dry to the touch (took about 2 minutes since you are using thin layers.) Overlap one row to make sure that it's square with everything. I kept using my little iPhone level too, just to make sure. 

To get the corners and the ceiling, I jammed little areas of the stencil into the corner and carefully painted with my fluffy brush rather than the foam roller. This is really tim consuming, but totally worth it so you have a seamless look.

After a while, my stencil started looking like a dino.

To make sure it's perfect, this was an incredibly long process. 

At one point, I thought this would be easier than wallpaper. I was so wrong.

But honestly, I love the effect and I think every second was absolutely worth it. This is the anchor that this large room needed and will fit perfectly with our future plans for the space. 

Now, as for the product. I got my stencil through Cutting Edge Stencils. It was a sturdy product, especially since I was jamming it, twisting it and generally abusing the stencil to paint the corners and walls perfectly. The stencil was also very large enough that I was able to do big areas at once. Less moving = less time = super awesome. 

The stencil was extremely easy to clean, especially using latex paint.

My only complaint? It came in the mail torn. Yeah, seriously. So annoying. Unfortunately, I didn't see the tear until I started working and was too committed to stop and contact the company. I recommend giving your stencil a good once-over before you are too far in. 

Overall, I would totally recommend Cutting Edge for your product. They have tons of great geometric patterns. I'm already looking around for my next pattern for the guest bath...

[yeah, you heard me right. I'm willing to do this again.]