Stencil Art

I'm not very artistic, but give me a stencil and I can pretend! I bought a great stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils--here's their website:

http://www.cuttingedgestencils.com/wall-stencils-stencil-designs.html

Starting with raw fence planks from Lowes, I made a nice piece of wall art for our home. It was really very simple. The photos below show the process.

Basically, we cut the planks and screwed them together to make a 3'x5' canvas. Then my husband sanded the surface and made the edges look weathered by using a chisel to rough up the edges and then a hand sander to smooth it.

I stained it and brushed a coat of polyurethane on top. Then it was ready to stencil!

I used three different colors of acrylic paint, starting with the green on the bottom, and then layered gold and white on top. I started by using a stencil brush but it was difficult to achieve crisp lines, so I ended up using a small brush for enhanced accuracy. It took longer, but ultimately it looks better.

So easy!

What's great about this stencil is that it is very sturdy, easy to clean, and reusable.