Tips for DIY Stenciling a Wall

I finally finished the DIY stenciled wall in Romeo’s room! I literally did a small amount (like sometimes one block) at a time until I was pulled in another direction. So this past weekend Zan left for a shoot in Tahoe and I decided that no matter what, I’m finishing that freaking wall! After contemplating wallpaper for the longest time, I decided to try my hand at stenciling. Wallpaper is more expensive (at least the patterns I wanted!), a pain to remove and to be honest, who knows how long Romeo would like the wallpaper for. I’m so happy with how the stenciling turned out and I can easily paint over it! BUT I must say if you’re a perfectionist, stenciling is not for you, as it will never look perfect! If you like to paint, get crafty and enjoy your homemade, not so perfect masterpieces than this is a project for you… haha! There is a lot of maneuvering, cutting and just winging it with doing an entire wall. Below are my 6 tips for DIY stenciling a wall!

1. Buy your supplies: You’ll need a lot of painters tape, a sponge for stenciling, a small angled paintbrush, paint, scissors, paper towels, and your stencil. Tape off the entire border around the wall so you won’t have too much bleed. I painted the wall with the color Ash from Restoration Hardware and then used Slate for the pattern color, also from Restoration. I used All the Angles Moroccan Stencil, which you can find here.
2. Store it – It’s a real challenge to finish a wall like this in one day, so I kept my small bowl of tightly sealed paint along with the sponge in a ziplock bag in the fridge. I had quick access to it if I had a few minutes to paint.
3. Tape it – I used tape instead of adhesive to stick my stencil to the wall. I read that adhesive just gets really messy, so good ole painters tape and my fingers to push the stencil down where I was painting.
4. Cheat it! If you’re doing an entire wall, the stencil will fail you! Once the majority of the wall is complete and you don’t need the full pattern anymore, you will most likely need to cut it someway to stencil the edges and bottom. So do the big sections first and make your way to the smaller ones. You have to be able to tweak the pattern and do whatever you need for it to match. For example, once I did the majority of the wall, I got to the edges and there was a 3″ gap between the design and corner of the wall. I had to fill it in to keep the seamless pattern, so I cut the stencil, then lightly sponged the design on the wall and filled the rest in with a paint brush.
5. Keep it light! Less is more. I found that if you use less paint on the sponge and do 2 lighter coats, you’ll have less bleed and better edges on the pattern. So don’t be such a heavy dipper. : )
6. Touch it up – I used a small narrow, angled brush to do my touch ups. I used each color and touched up what I could of the bleeding. But I pretty much just accepted that it’s NOT perfect and I still love it!

Now I need to decorate his room!