It all started on black Friday. I hadn't intended on going shopping that day, but we finally decided on two potential colors for the study, and I wanted to get test pots so we could think think about it with the actual colors on the wall. While I was waiting for the test pots to mix, I noticed a box of free mini Glidden samples, with a sign that said "Free!" There weren't many left, but I was intrigued by a dark purple one. There were three bottles, and I took them all. I had been wanting to do a stencil pattern in my daughter's room, and thought that the free sample pots were perfect - I'd just have to decide on a stencil. Deciding was more difficult than I thought it would be, as my husband decided to have an opinion. Darn it. He liked a lot of the same stencils I did, but not, he said, for a little girl's room. He said I was skewing too old. Bah.
Because his opinion does count too, I made a concerted effort to think like a two year old, and narrowed it down to two; one with butterflies, another with flowers. The winner was Daisy Crazy #1 from Cutting Edge Stencils. I also bought some stencil brushes.
I had been picking up sample pots from Home Depot's "oops" paint shelf (which has totally disappeared from my local store [/sad]), but realized as I was setting them all out that I didn't really want a dozen different colors in there. I decided to go with the original free purple test bottles, a blue, and then I mixed up leftover red paint from the front door with leftover white paint from my son's desk.
Yay for getting started!
My older son was really eager to help out. I was concerned, as his idea of helping paint walls usually involves glopping as much paint as possible onto the brush, and flinging it at the wall. Not exactly the technique I was hoping to use for the stencils. I told him he could help though, if he let me put the paint on the brush. He promised to do "quality work." (Thank you first grade teachers everywhere!) I did the first one, the smallest stencil, to show him how to carefully do it.
I just used painter's tape to keep the stencil on the wall. I was a bit worried as our walls are textured, but had forgotten to pick up a bottle of craft adhesive, so thought I'd take a chance with the small stencil to see how it worked. It worked well for the smaller stencil, and actually for the largest one too, but for the medium one, the points around the middle of the stencil tended to want to curl up. I also think the spray adhesive would have made doing stencils around corners or on the edges easier. We made do with tape though, and it worked fine.
Of course my son didn't want to do the small one. He grabbed the biggest one, with small fussy sections for his first. He did a great job though; he let me load the brush with paint, and carefully dabbed the brush up and down to get the paint on the wall.
He also got bored after doing two or three.
After putting a bunch of pink and blue flowers up, I turned to the purple. The beautiful purple that started this whole project. I noticed when I poured the paint onto the plate I was using that the Glidden was a lot runnier than the Behr paint that I used for the other colors. I was also worried that the purple was a lot darker than the pink and blue, but thought I'd put one up on the wall just to see how it would look. I used the small stencil so that if it didn't turn out well, I could cover it with the medium stencil. Good plan, as it did not turn out well. No matter how little paint I put on the brush, and how carefully I tried to go around the edges, the paint was so runny it went all over. The dark color and runny consistency combined to make the paint job look blotchy with just one coat. But more coats was not what I was looking for when stenciling, as it was just more opportunity for the paint to bleed around the edges. Purple paint fail. But of course, I had to try again. Just in case the first one was a fluke. It wasn't.
But I really wanted purple! I looked through the other sample pots I had, and thought I had enough blues and reds to make purple, but I really wanted a lighter purple. I mixed more of the red, a blue, and a light grey blue and finally got a purple I was happy with. The light grey blue was also from Glidden, and also fairly runny, but not as runny as the original purple. The resulting paint was thinner than the Behr, but not so much that it was bleeding everywhere.
I finished the first wall, and decided to do the whole room, rather than just one accent wall. Because I decided to do the whole room, I had some of the flowers go around corners, or go off the edge of the wall. The stencil material is pretty flexible, so it just took some bending and smushing to get it in place. The adhesive might have been helpful here, as the painters tape on the edges didn't really help hold the parts along the wall contours very well, and I ended up holding those sections to the wall with one hand, while painting with the other.
As I worked around the room, I kept coming back to some sections, thinking they needed another blue to balance it out, or a big pink one there, or maybe some more purple in that corner. Before I knew it, the walls were covered, and there are probably a few more flowers than are strictly necessary. Lesson learned. Next time I plan random placement of stencils, I'll do a bit more planning of the randomness. My daughter loves it though!
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