You know I absolutely love using stencils when I am doing a piece of furniture. I think it is such a great way to add something extra to the piece. I have not been brave enough to tackle a big project such as a wall until now! ****SPOILER ALERT*** It is actually not as hard as you may think!
Since doing the renovations on the house, we had to budget on how much we would spend on each room. My craft room is actually a room that has almost zero budget! Everything I am going to put in there must be as cheap as possible! This is not to say I don’t want it to be as beautiful as the rest of the house.. not at all, it will be amazing I am sure, I just simply have to think outside the box a little!
I really wanted to have a nice crisp room with some added splashes of colour, white, grey, duck egg blue with some hints of gold. I really wanted to have a feature wall and initially was planning to paint grey stripes. After a little nightmare disaster with the masking tape I gave that idea up. I was toying with wallpaper idea but decided to ‘sleep on it’ for now.
Here is where Stencil Warehouse* come in!! I love the company as they have a great selection of fabulous stencils. Not only that they also create custom stencils too! They take customer service very seriously and were asking for ideas on what the customers would like to see. I sent a suggestion for a Marrakech trellis stencil as I LOVE this print and guess what??? They now stock it and they also cut this beautiful stencil for me to try out too!! It was perfect for my craft room!
The stencil is absolutely brilliant, it is huge! I mean it’s very big so makes it so much easier to work with. There is no need to keep removing it and retaping the stencil constantly!
First thing to do is make sure the walls and the ceiling are protected. Use low tack tape to tape around the areas.
I attached a little level on the stencil using a double sided tape to make sure the pattern was level on the wall as I know the walls in the house are far from perfect. Because the walls were not entirely straight I had to improvise a little especially around the corners and edges.
You then need to find your focal point. As the trellis stencil has a continuous pattern, I chose to start from the middle of the wall. It meant I had a straight pattern all the way down the wall and it would be easier to follow.
Once you are happy, secure the stencil using low tack tape, make sure the stencil is straight and secure it in place.
Use a small dense foam roler and remove excess paint by rolling it on a paper towel (this is very important, please don’t skip this step). Avoid the temptation to have lots of paint on the roller or brush. With stencils, less really is more. Too much paint will end up bleeding under the stencil.
Once you have finished one section, move on to the next one. You don’t really need to wait as the paint dries pretty quickly. If you notice the paint is still wet, be careful not to smudge it.
I started to get to the grips and I think got a bit too cocky. I ended up messing up the pattern just above the window and had to paint over it. As I was getting frustrated I decided to call it a night and finish it off the next day (good call as the next day I was focusing more and made sure I did everything right!)
The corners and edges were a bit more fiddly, however, once you start it gets pretty easy. Work with the same principle – align your stencil and paint using a stencil brush. The large trellis stencil comes together with an A3 stencil sheet, which is very helpful for those tough corners and edges.
I LOOOOOVE how it turned out!!! The wall looks absolutely gorgeous. A few more things I need to finish off before I can share the whole craft room reveal. For now, you can see my beautiful stencil feature wall!
*Disclaimer: I was given this stencil free of charge by Stencil Warehouse to try it, however, all opinions, ideas are 100% my own and are not influenced in any way.
** This post contains affiliate links
It’s beautiful! You will enjoy that for a long time to come.
Absolutely love it. Great job. One day I should be brave enough and stencil a wall xx You made it look easy
Thank you Inese. It is actually easier than I thought, just have to concentrate, but trust me it is a lot of fun and I absolutely love my craft room wall! Give it a go!
That was a scary project for sure but you succeed! It looks wonderful! I have a question, how did you do the corners, did you fold the A3 stencil? I still don’t dare to try mine…
Thank you Pili, it was actually better than I thought. It was a little scary to start with but later on you get used to it! Definitely give it a try. I put the stencil and you kind of fold it in as you go along the edges and corners, its made of material that is easily manoeuvred, so I pressed the A3 stencil pattern against the wall and painted over using a stencil brush.
I love it! I wasn’t sure what you mean by start in the middle. Could you be more specific?
Thank you Debra. I started from the middle of the wall as it was the section that allowed me to do uninterrupted floor-to-ceiling row of the pattern. It allowed me to establish a perfect vertical pattern and I could then work either side of the wall to continue. If you have a window or something in the centre of the wall try and find the area that will allow you to stencil the whole pattern uninterrupted. I hope this helps .
You are such a maestro, Evija! I would love to try it but I don’t know whether it will have the same beautiful result hehehehe
Evija..I love that indeed. We are going to start the renovation of our home back in Indonesia this summer. Will definitely use your tips and tricks along the way. Thanks for sharing it..
Hi, Do you have to wait for the first section to dry before moving on to the second section? How long did it take for the one wall?
Hi Trish, thanks for the comment.. as you dab the roller or the brush and have very little paint the section by the time you finish is nearly dry so you can go straight away and do the next.. if i felt it was still a little wet I waited a couple of minutes just to make sure it didn’t smudge .. it took me 2 days to finish the wall off but probably around 4-6 hours in total as I was doing it slowly making sure it is straight and proper .. plus I got annoyed with myself so had to stop and start with a fresh head the next day ! Good luck it isn’t as scary and hard as it may sound!
WOW sweetheart You get a hats off thumbs-up fantastic and fantastic instructions thank you so very much because I get impatient as well LOL
What paint finish did you use? I read somewhere that flat is best but I don’t really like flat paint. At all. Plus it’s in a hair salon. Thanks!
You can use any paint finish as long as it’s designed for walls.. I used matt emulsion but you can use silk or more durable paint if you prefer !