I have been thinking of a decoupage project on a furniture with some ethnic touch of mughal images and hand painted stenciling. Before I try them on furniture I wanted to try on something small and this is what I tried on, an antique spice box.
If you want to try stenciling on furniture, the most common problem that we would have is paint bleed. Yes this piece did not turn perfect in my first attempt, I have gone through the bleeding chaos, and multiple redoes. This is how it turned after my third attempt.
So I want share my learning about stencils and suggest some best practices.
First thing you want to do is a dry run on a piece of paper. I used acrylic colors for this project, but you can use chalk paints or oil paints too.
- Pick the colors you want to stencil with and do a test run on paper.
2. PAINTERS TAPE. I am the laziest person on the earth, and I never care to use painters tape to any of my projects (my husband does that for me :P). But yes, this saves a lot of your time from later mess clean up. Decide the spot you want to place the stencil and stick it with painters tape. You also get a spray adhesive (found one in amazon) that you can coat on backside and stick it to the furniture.
3. STENCIL BRUSH ONLY. Always use the stencil brush and NOT the paint brush. That was my first mistake which cased a lot of bleeding. Stencil brush has soft bristles and are all leveled unlike paint brush having pointed tips.
4. LESS PAINT. this is the key element to get the stenciling right. Dab the brush on a paper napkin before you apply to reduce the paint. You always want to dry brush when using a stencil. I know it does not give bright color with dry brush, but you need to apply coats.
5. Lots of patience. It takes quite some time to apply the base coat, let it dry and then dry brush the stencil, let it dry. Apply coats, let it dry, let it dry, let it dry….like forever before you can remove the stencil 😛
6. NO BANDAGE RIP. Whether its a painters tape or self adhesive stencils, do not rip off the stencil like a band aid. This strips off the paint from base coat(ask me about it ), so be nice and slow while you do it.
And yes after all Practice makes man perfect. you will surely get to perfection once you start using it often 🙂
