Sara's Tips and Tricks for Stenciling Curtains

I'm still loving my curtains.

When I shared them I mentioned that there are a lot of tutorials online for stenciling curtains. I don't want to be redundant, so I'll skip the step-by-step part and offer my tips for anyone who might take on this project. You can take or leave my unsolicited advice, of course, but thought I'd share in the hopes of preventing unneeded headaches for everyone else. I'm a regular Mother Teresa, I tell you.  

Sara's Tips and Tricks for Stenciling Curtains: 

• Recruit a friend to help you! My mom is a good sport, so she worked on these with me. She held the stencil while I sponged and did various other things that made this project more manageable. (Thanks, mom! You're so awesome!) 
• If possible, buy more than one stencil. I started with one stencil and we had to keep taking breaks to wash the stencil when paint seeped underneath the stencil. This was very time consuming since seepage happened somewhat regularly. With more than one stencil, we were simply able to grab another stencil when the seepage paint on one stencil needed to dry. I actually ended up with four stencils thanks to Joann's famous 40% off coupons. Four is probably a little overboard, but this system proved to be very efficient.   
• Don't wash your stencil. As I mentioned, we started out washing them when paint leaked underneath, but over time the stencil stretched out. A stretched out stencil makes it easier for paint to seep underneath and provides more opportunity for imperfect prints. 
• Don't bother measuring the distance between stencil prints. Use an object with a constant size and shape. For example, we used quarters. Horizontally, we spaced the prints the length of two quarters butted up to each other. Vertically we used three quarters. We used this method to give us the main rows. We later went in and filled in the area between the two main rows by placing the stencil in the center of the four prints already created using the quarter method.      

• Whatever object you use to space the stencil, don't drag it from one spot to the next. We had an incident where a tiny bit of paint got on one of the quarters. Dragging it in this instance meant smearing the paint. Luckily, when this happened to us we were at the bottom of a curtain and I knew that the bottom of one of the curtains would be blocked by the couch. Ultimately, it wasn't that noticeable, but I would have noticed it every time I looked at it. So learn from our mistake: pick it up, don't slide it.  
• Just get enough paint on your sponge to do the job. Too much paint on your sponge will contribute to seepage underneath the stencil. Too little paint will make the sponge stick to the stencil causing the stencil to bounce. When in doubt, find a spare piece of cloth and do a test stencil before hand!  

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's what I have to offer. I hope my tips serve you well. If you end up taking on your own stencil project, shoot me a line and tell me how it goes!

Stenciled Curtains: The Big Reveal

Remember when I jinxed myself from ever having kids by creating a pre-baby to-do list? In that list, I included stenciling curtains for our living room. The reason I wanted to stencil curtains is because I fell in love with way-too-expensive-for-me-to-justify Anthropologie curtains.

Photo: Source

Aren't they beautiful? If I could have married these curtains, I would have. They're that awesome. Without an awesome price tag, though, I knew they would never be mine. I thought the next best thing would be to stencil my white Ikea curtains. This thought had occurred to me because I saw a tutorial on stenciling Ikea rugs and figured I'd give it a go on curtains. After researching it more, however, I found that there are plenty of stenciled curtain tutorials as well (here, here, and here, for example). As you can see, everyone has their own techniques, so it's probably not necessary to reinvent the wheel.  I do have some tips, however, and I'll share those in a separate post.   

I started these bad boys in September (I think) and have worked on and off on them with my mom since the day after Thanksgiving. At long last, to me anyways, here is the big curtain reveal.

The stencil is smaller than the design in the Anthro curtains and I'm sure the weight of the fabric is much lighter, but I'm really enjoying the fruits of our labor. The print and color add so much to our living room. They remind me of beautiful earrings that finish off an outfit. They're the chandelier earrings of our living room, if you will. I had a little bit of fear that they would look cheesy and, perhaps, cheap, but they turned out quite nicely. So if you're ever looking for an inexpensive solution to patterned curtains, you may want to consider stenciling curtains you already have.

If you're wondering, here's the progress on my list: 

• Paint and decorate dining room
• Stencil Ikea curtains in living room
• Clean out "baby room"
• Organize garage
• Decorate staircase wall
• Give loaner desk back to mom and dad
• Refinish mom and dad's donated dresser for master bedroom
• Repair carpet in den and upstairs hallway
• Shampoo carpet and rug in den
• Reorganizing kitchen cupboards
• Revamp kitchen recycle center
• DIY throw pillows for couch

Putting Us on the Map

I'm working on my pre-baby to do list and putting the finishing touches on our staircase wall. I've put a lot of love into this wall, filling it with fun prints and sentimental pieces. I've been inspired by the map art floating around on Pinterest. I know it's a bit trendy, but I really love the idea of creating art using a map of a place with special significance. My inspirational pieces include:

Tickety Boo via Pinterest

and...

  maryruffle.tumbler.com (original link broken) via Pinterest

I switched it up a little and made some map art on canvas that I already had on hand. I used four small canvases with each canvas representing a place that is special to Nick and I. The maps include: where we met, got engaged, got married, and where we live. I basically Mod Podged the maps onto the canvases and then added a candy apple red brad next to the city name to draw attention to the specific location.  

To make these bad boys, I used four 5" x 7" canvases, tacky glue, Mod Podge, maps, and scissors.

I set the canvas on top of the area of the map that I wanted to highlight. When I had the canvas and the map positioned to my liking, I cut around the canvas leaving a 2" overhang on each side. 

I spread tacky glue on the canvas. Mod Podge works too, but I happened to have a little tacky glue left over from an old project.  

I placed my map onto the wet canvas and pressed down. Next, I used a credit card to smooth out the surface, working from the center and pushing the glue out towards the sides. 

I clipped the four corners of the map, brushed tacky glue on the sides of the canvas, and adhered the overhang to the sides and the back of the canvas frame.

I let the pieces dry for about 24 hours and then coated each with Mod Podge. I then let the Mod Podge dry for an additional 24 hours and globbed on another coat.  

After I finished my last coat of Mod Podge, and each canvas was sufficiently dry, I inserted these sweet little brads into the canvas. I picked the brads up from my local scrapbook store, but you can also order them online. They come in every color imaginable and even with a little bling-bling.  

It definitely wasn't a hard project, and I really like the way they turned out!