Thursday, March 6, 2014

DIY Damask Stencil for Little Girl's Room


Hey friends!  How are you all doing today?  Things for me are uneventful....which is good :) My poor husband is sick though, so that's not very fun.  Poor guy has a pretty bad case of bronchitis.  We bought the movie Frozen off of Amazon on demand the other day (the day it came out)...and my kids have done nothing but watch it over and over, back to back.  I just keep playing those songs in my head all day long.  At least they are good songs, right.

Today, I''m going to share with you a project I did quite awhile ago....well before I started blogging.  I just think it was one of my thriftier ideas, and I thought you guys would like to hear about it.




 Back when I was working on my girls' room....to make it a cute nursery, I decided to add wainscoting to the bottom half of the walls in their room. It was a very very time consuming long process.  I did the entire thing with a hammer, nails, a miter box and a hand saw...it was the stone ages, I tell ya!  It turned out perfect, though and it still looks great.  I wanted to do something in the middle of the squares of the wainscoting.  At first I thought I wanted to upholster the middle of each section and do some tufting.....baaaahaaaahahaha....yeah, that did not work out AT ALL!  I wish I had some pictures of it so you could see how bad it was.  It was seriously laughable.  So I ripped out all of that and started fresh.  At the time, I was ba-roke....I decided that I wanted to stencil the middle of the squares, but I was being so thrifty, I didn't even want to spend the money it cost to buy a stencil.  I decided to make a stencil.  I found an image online of a pattern that I liked.  Disclaimer:  This was a long time ago and I have no idea where I found this image....if I had the source, I would totally give credit to it.


 Anyways, I knew I could order it in an 8x10 picture for like 3 bucks....but I wanted the stencil to be bigger, so I cut the image in half on microsoft paint and saved it in two different files.




  I made sure to overlap where I cut the image in half, so I would have an easier time piecing it together once I printed them out.  Next, I printed out the two 8x10 images at my local 1 hour photo, and taped them together so they matched up (this is where the overlap helped).  Next, I got a couple large pieces of stencil plastic from Walmart, I think it was 2 dollars, and I taped them together.


  I laid the pictures over the stencil plastic, and I proceeded to cut it out with an exacto knife.  It took quite awhile, but I eventually had a perfect stencil!  I then began stenciling on the wall just as you would normally. I don't have any pictures of the process....but I eventually finished it and it worked like a charm!  These have been up for a couple of years now and they have held up beautifully.



Some of these pictures are shadowy and crappy....sorry.  




 You can see some of my girls' turquoise door in this one....and how they pulled all of the knobs off of their coat rack. :\   I still have a good bit of work to do in here until I can do a "reveal" blog post on this room.  


  There you have it!  An expensive looking stencil for about 7 bucks.  People, like they say, time is money....and if you're willing to put in the time, you can most definitely save the money.  I'm considering doing it again to try to recreate the pattern on the wall in this photo.


This image came from the styled soul.com
I am so in love with this picture :) 

 I think a pattern similar to this would be perfect in my entryway. We shall see how that works out.
I hope everyone has a lovely day!
xoxo!
Anna


Linked to:
between naps on the front porch
making the world cuter
skip to my lou
C.R.A.F.T.
Craft-O-Maniac
the new york melrose family
free pretty things for you
someday crafts
polkadots on parade
lady behind the curtain
seven thirty three
cherished bliss
craftie allie
ginger snap crafts
live laugh rowe
the creative connection
living well, spending less
liz marie
life in velvet
design dining and diapers
artsy fartsy mama
remodelaholic
the idea room
jennifer rizzo
my repurposed life
the shabby nest
craft dictator
tatertots and jello
504 main
chic on a shoestring
my romantic home
too much time on my hands
classy clutter
just us four
be different act normal
a little claireification
six sisters stuff

4 comments:

  1. Very pretty and clever! Do hope you don't mind me adding the following suggestion: --
    What I have done in the past is used my Computer Photo Editing program and depending upon the project; printed off the design using a 'poster' or a 'banner' format which in turn can be traced on to the stencil sheets and then cut out as you have done. Both methods work exceptional well for images that you might require an even larger and/or more repetitious design.
    -Brenda-

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much for the tip! My version was a bit less tech savvy...ha! I will keep that in mind for the future!

      Delete
  2. Gorgeous! I love your stencil pattern! This is so smart...I've always had a hard time finding stencils I like in the right size, and now I have my answer :) Thank you so much for linking up at Thursday STYLE!

    ReplyDelete