Monday, April 9, 2012

A Bible Verse Stencil Tutorial

Easy peasy stenciling
My sister wanted to stencil a Bible verse on her wall above a bay window in her kitchen.

Here is the wall
  So we set about figuring out the best way to do it.  
She gave it much thought and did lots of research on stencil websites etc.

Here are the words


We settled on a website called The Simple Stencil


Their website was the easiest to navigate and gave you all sorts of visual graphics about how it would look finished.  You could pick your wall color, your stencil paint color and your font, including how large and the spacing.  It really helped in visualizing what it would look like.

 Measuring the wall space was very important.  The website tells you how large the letters can be by the space you have given them.  I think our letters ended up being about 4.5" high.

 We chose a font called "Adorable"...it's the last one pictured here.

We did have one problem....when the stencil came, it wasn't a stencil at all, but vinyl lettering that you stick on the wall.  Apparently there was a place where you check off that you want a stencil and not vinyl lettering but we missed it.  Soooooo we emailed them and they were very nice, and agreed to take that one back and send the correct one....whew!!


 The Stencil comes in 3 layers....a backing sheet, a sticky vinyl sheet and a top paper sheet.
You need to tape the stencil to the wall at the top....don't forget to measure.
Then you flip up the whole thing, using the tape as a hinge and start to peel the backing down from the top and slowly start sticking it to the wall, using the tool they give you to smooth it out.


When you have the whole thing stuck on the wall, you can then start peeling off the front paper.

 Your stencil is now ready for paint.....well maybe a coffee break first!

We cut out the words Micah 6:8 before sticking the stencil because they were centered and we preferred them to be off to the right.  When the main stencil was finished we just went back and did the same procedure with the smaller stencil.


We practiced first on a cardboard box with the wall color and another stencil to
 figure out what texture we wanted. A dabbing motion worked best with the special stencil brush.  It took a few tries to perfect the look we wanted.

It was gung-ho from there!


The actual stenciling was the shortest part of the whole thing. 
 Before I could think about it, I was done. 

We used a cream color paint on the first coat and then a very light yellow on top of that,
 making sure not to apply it too heavily.  

We wanted some of the green wall color to show through and did not want it to look like
 a solid painted letter.  A light touch was used so it would appear soft.


We let the paint dry for an hour or so,  
(had more coffee....a very integral part of the operation)  
and then started peeling off the stencil.....
praying that the wall paint didn't come off with it....since it was quite sticky.

It came off beautifully.....pretty and clean!


It came out PERFECT!!!
Thank you Simple Stencil