Stenciling Tips

Have any of you done any stenciling before? Years ago I stenciled a border around my bathroom and I've occasionally stenciled something onto a craft, so I thought stenciling a wall in my new craft room would be pretty easy.  

Well it wasn't actually hard, it just took FOREVER! I think I spent as much time stenciling this wall as I did painting the entire basement. 

The question is, was it worth it? 

Here is a closeup of the stencil I chose. I had to repeat this over....

and over....

and over...

and over again. 594 times to be exact.

I'm looking at this picture now thinking that I am crazy to have done this, but I LOVE how it turned out. It will not be painted over for a looong time, if ever. It took too much time.

So here are a few of my unprofessional tips if you decide to stencil a whole wall:

1. Choose a larger stencil. Mine was only 5"x 5". I spent half my time repositioning the dang thing. 

2. Use a level. This was really helpful in keeping my lines straight. Each time I would reposition the stencil I would check and see if I had it up straight. Sometimes when you are so close to the wall, it looks like it's straight but it's really not. {This might not apply if you have a random patterned stencil}

3. Use small amounts of paint and dab it on. Don't brush it on, it will get underneath the stencil and mess everything up.

4. Make sure you have lots of movies for your kids to watch while you spend hours ignoring them;) Actually my 2 year old liked to "help" me. She learned how to dip the brush into the paint, only getting a small amount on. However it was much faster and easier when she got sick of it and moved on to other things.

5. Patience! Patience! Patience!

This is looking kind of brownish in the pictures, but it's actually green. The base color is Frosted Pine by Glidden and the stenciling was done in Prairie Sage also by Glidden. All the other walls in this room are Prairie Sage too.

So I'm dying to know what you think. Was it worth my time? Do you love it as much as I do?

Want to try stenciling on fabric? Try these easy stenciled totes!