My Stencil Wall

I have to start this post by telling you two things about me.

First, I am not creative. I am crafty.
There is a huge difference. I can take inspiration from blogs, magazines and design shows and figure out how to make them happen, or tweak them to make them work for me. I don't usually come up with the original ideas.

Second, I have to bow down to Emily Jones of Jones Design Company.
Her room was my inspiration. It took me weeks to finally finish my tiny wall. She painted an ENTIRE craft room. I don't know how she did it because after 3 more hours of painting last night I can barely stand.

I'm not going to bother with a tutorial because Emily has two posts that give you all the steps for how to do this in your own home. I'm just sharing mine because even though it was hours of work both tracing and then hand painting, it turned out beautifully and I love it.

I have mentioned before how frustrating my home layout is. Besides the really long wall in my living area that still drives me nuts, there was also this oddly shaped wall between the stairs going up and the stairs going down. It reminds me of a puzzle game I used to play when I was younger where you would place these plastic shape tiles onto a picture to figure out what configuration of shapes fit.

Anyway, I have spent over a year staring at that wall and trying to figure out how to make me hate it less. Then I stumbled upon Emily's blog post and knew what I wanted to do. Well step one at least, the second part of my dream involves tools and handiness. Neither of which I currently posses, but I'm working on it.

So, I used the stencil from Emily's handy pdf link, resized it and then working from the ceiling down I started tracing as carefully as I could. Tracing took me about two hours.

For the painting part I got an artists brush (Brush Basics Bright #5) and some eggshell paint and waited until the kids were in bed. I fired up the DVR and settled in to a groove quickly. Emily's two part post best explains how to get the double line look. Some of the people who originally did this ended up with only one outline.
I got about four rows further down than this photo shows before I stopped. For about a month. I guess there are really three things to tell you about me. I get really excited about projects, but then I get bored of them and my poor family has to look at all kinds of lovely half finished things.

Then one of two things happen I either get my second wind and really excited about finishing up. Or I get really excited about another project and I know I need to finish the undone thing first. In this case it was the latter. I really want to paint my master bedroom, but this wall was staring me down.

So once again, I mustered some reserve energy, fired up Real Housewives on the DVR, and got to work. I painted from 8:30 to 11:30 last night with three water breaks.  I'm running on fumes today, but every time I see this wall now, I smile.



Partly because it's finally finished, but mostly because it is so much prettier now!

Have any of you other crafty ladies out there stenciled walls or, even a room?  Leave me your link because I'd love to see them!