Stenciling our Office

See that??  I did that, I am so COOOOOOL!

I fell prey to a few home decorating blogs and got a wild hair, I decided to stencil our office.  I love the overall look and couldn't be any happier!  So I'll give you the skinny on what I learned, since this is my first time stenciling.

Where did I get my Stencil?  What's Included? Price?
I purchased my Stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils.  I was super happy with the service.  I had my Stencil within 5 days.  The stencil arrives packaged nicely so that there's no chance of damage.  In each package you get colored instructions and a smaller stencil to help you fill in edges.  The price of the stencil was a little shocking to me, I did look around the net for quite some time and $35-55 dollars seems to be the going rate for this type of stencil.

What tools do I need?  What worked best for you?
Patience, stencil, latex/acrylic paints, paint tray, paper towels, wet wipes, stencil brush.

On the cutting edge website it mentioned using a high density foam roller over a brush, I have to tell you I couldn't get the stencil filled in properly using the roller.  I had my husband go back to Home Depot for the stencil brush and let me tell you the quality greatly improved with the stencil.  It took more time to do each dot by hand, but the crisp clean lines from this method were worth it.

When I was using the foam roller I just couldn't get a nice coat, perhaps it's because the dots are decently small - Perhaps with a larger stencil a roller would work.  Or it might just be me.

This is one pass with the stencil, so you can see the Size

How did you pick your colors?
I got 4 samples of different grays from Home Depot.  I painted a large square with each on my wall.  I then lived with the grays for a couple of days.  It's important to see them all at once and in different light.  I was super surprised at just how different each gray was.

Once I picked the gray I then taped up white paint samples against the grey, white is what I chose for the beads.  I must have looked at 20 whites before I chose the right white for me.  I'm super professional yo!

How long did this take?
You know what, this took a little longer then I thought it would.  After I painted my accent wall gray, the white stencil took me about 5 hours. You have to keep things lined up and have to clean the stencil every so often - so that takes time.  I did find that once I quit using the roller and went with the brush I didn't have to clean the stencil so often since paint wasn't weighing it down.

The Stenciling dries super quick!  

Tips?
Take down all your blinds and curtains, make sure the surface is flat.

As you're stenciling make sure to press down on the stencil, you don't want drips or the stencil brush going under the stencil.  Tap the stencil with the brush or make little circles, I found both ways produced the same results as far as coverage.  Pressing the stencil down prevents the bristles from slipping under the exposed pattern.

Once I got to corners I held the stencil with my own hands and had my husband hand me the loaded stencil brush, I just could not get the stencil to tape up properly on some corners and this worked for us.

Would I do this again?
Oh Heck yeah!  I just LOVE LOVE the way it turned out.  I think the stencil was of great quality, and found lots of info on the Cutting Edge site to make the project as easy as it could be for a first timer.