I am seeing so many colorful wingtip shoes for guys. Two-toned, colorful soles, color is not just for the ladies anymore! So I grabbed an old suede pair of wingtips I had, mixed some folk art blue paint with medium textile, and voila! I just painted in the separated sections! easy. Can’t wait to wear them!
Chalkboards are so trending right now, I see chalkboard projects everywhere. I wanted to do some layering effects on the board and make it useful too. Also, I am a list person and creating this board will save me paper!
Here’s how I made my To Do board:
First I took a wood art board and poked two holes in it so later I could string it with twine to hang.
I then painted the board with Chalkboard paint. I used traditional black. I painted two coats.
Once that dried I stenciled the words “to do” on the board using my Corsiva alphabet stencil.
I wanted my to do board to be fun so I used my birds on wires to add these little guys and the lines function as areas to write. I stenciled using very little white paint to make it look like chalk but not be erasable. Once that was dry, I conditioned the board with some chalk. You have to rub chalk all over the board then erase it. Otherwise, when you write on your board, it may show permanently what you wrote.
I then strung some twine to hang the board. Hung, chalk ready, and time to write my list!
Stenciling cards = fun. Stenciling wooden postcards = WAY MORE FUN! There is something so impressive about receiving a wooden postcard in the mail. Stencil some wooden cards and snail mail them to your besties.
Look at how happy these people are with their cards!
Spring awakens the desire for renewal and growth, a craving for color and brightness. Here are some repeat stencil patterns to help your home pop with fresh bold design!
See all our pattern stencils here and to see how to do it all, watch our how-to video on creating a repeat pattern on your wall using one stencil here.
This project is the utmost in up-cycling. Using a discarded item to make a beautiful gift, I’m all about that! So, I went to the dog park the other morning with my best friend Larry, shown here obsessing on a tennis ball. There I found a discarded empty bottle of cheap brandy in the bushes and that is the bottle I will use to show you how to etch a design on to it. Don’t worry, I took it home in a bag and boiled it!
Wrapping a stencil around a bottle is not so easy and etching creme is thinner than paint so it seeps a lit under a stencil unless of course you are using these new adhesive silk-screen stencils by Martha Stewart. Yes, Martha and the people at Plaid have created yet again a fool-proof tool so you can be creative and not worry about messing up! These silkscreens are really easy to use and lots of tasteful designs to choose from. Here’s what I did.
First, I peeled the silkscreen off of it’s backing and placed it where I wanted the design to appear on the bottle. The back is sticky, re-positionable, and reusable.
Here’s a better shot so you see it really is a screen. This helps control your paint or in this case etching cream.
Then with protective gloves on, I brushed a generous amount of the cream onto the open areas of the stencil. Go in a few directions so you don’t see brush strokes.
After 15 minutes, I rinsed the bottle with the screen still attached in the sink. I peeled the screen off at this time and washed the bottle, the brush, and the screen/stencil.
I dried off the bottle and that’s when you can really see your etched design!
To finish it off, I carved an old champagne cork for the top and tied some twine around the neck to give it a vintage look.
It was so gratifying, I went hunting for more glass bottles! Hope this inspires you and please show me what you make!
Have you noticed it’s the year of breaking traditions? I see a trend in holiday crafts that break away from the norm – chevron pumpkins, succulent filled wreathes, and now eggs are up for some reinvention. As a stencil artist, I have thought of this for some time but wrapping a stencil around an egg, not so easy. UNTIL NOW! (say that in a radio announcer voice). The folks at PLAID have these fantastic sticky rubbery stencils that can wrap around surfaces. I was introduced to these stencils at the CHA when I ran some demos at the Plaid booth and my brain starting thinking of all the surfaces I dismissed for being to hard to stencil! Cut to today, I was on Pinterest and saw some Easter Egg images and the stencils came to mind! So I broke out the stencils, adhered them to the eggs and used inkpads and a stencil brush to apply the designs. Who doesn’t love an Easter egg hunt and It would be fun to have the stenciled egg be the grand prize winner!
Oh and out of sheer boredom I sprayed my spray inks on one egg for a “graffiti egg” design! Let me see your reinvented egg designs!
