I thought painting with stencils would be pretty straightforward. It is so NOT! All I'm trying to do is paint some letters onto wooden blocks. I have my husband hold the stencil in place. I bought a special stenciling brush. I get all the excess paint off the brush. I dab at it, just like the youtube video said to. What am I missing? Why am I not getting crisp lines and crisp looking letters? Are there certain kinds of stencils that work better than others? This was just a normal alphabet set I got at Michael's. Should I get a stiffer stencil? Or do I just bag all of that and try stamps?
Please share your stenciling tips and tricks!
Thank you!
There is a spray adhesive you get and spray on the back of the stencil to hold it in place. When you take the stencil up you take it straight up, and you wash it and let it dry every time you use it. You may need to use a smaller stencil brush. Small dabs of little paint until you get your stencil filled up is what you do. Good luck and have fun :)
Hi! I thought of a couple of things: 1st, is your wall entirely flat, not textured? If you have textured walls you'll keep struggling to get a crisp edge. 2nd, your paintbrush should have very little paint on it each time you go to dab it. 3rd, you might consider taping your stencil too the wall at the top and the bottom of the stencil (with something like painters tape that removes easily) that way you have two hands free -- one to hold the stencil extra tight and one to dab. Hope these suggestions help and that you'll find the fun in stenciling.
It's been a while since I stenciled, but when you dab, start ON the stencil and work your say in to the space you're painting. If you start where you want the paint to be, you have a greater chance of the paint oozing underneath the stencil at the edges. So you want to go ahead and get the stencil itself painty as you work gently inwards. I found that it really pays to take the time to practice your technique beforehand! If your near a building supply store, would they give you a scrap piece of drywall for free? It would be worthwhile asking. Hope this helps.
There's most likely too much paint on your brush. Really, really get almost all of the paint off onto a paper towel before you stencil. You might need to let it dry and do a second coat to get the look you want (it should take less a minute to dry.) It does take a lot of patience as you need to clean the brush often. A little trick I've found if you get leakage is to use a small brush and outline, or highlight/shadow. It's time consuming, but it looks great.
I use the stiff plastic stencils.
Make sure you clean off all the paint between each stencil use.
For bigger jobs use the stencil stickey glue to help keep it place.
Take you brushes and brush from the stencil into the design area with light dabbing strokes towards the middle of the design.
Well, the best answer is practice. Bummer, but there it is. Make sure you tape the stencil down (hubby holding it is great, but it's still going to wiggle) and pounce in an up & down motion around the edges. You can swirl lightly - but try to swirl from on top of the stencil toward the middle (so you don't accidentally get under the edge).
Also you could go around the letters with maybe a paint pen to help neaten the edges? It's worth a shot.
I have a ton of stamps so that's how I would do it, but you'd need a crash course on ink types to use. You can get an alpha set for fairly cheap at Hobby Lobby/Michaels using a coupon and then you'll need a couple other things to complete your project (ink, etc).
Good luck!
If you are just doing something small like the letters on to blocks, it may be easier to just get vinyl letters and stick them on! :) I ended up packing up all of my stenciling things a couple of years ago because it was so much easier to use the vinyl-and so much faster!
