I’m thinking about…

I'm thinking about stencilling. We're pretty close to out of home decor funds for the rest of the year, but there's still rooms that are looking bare and a bit sad. We can't afford furniture for them yet (the list of missing furniture is long), but I have a lot of leftover paint from all the house-painting, inside and out, and I'm thinking stencils might be a high-labor, low-cost way to go. I ordered two yesterday.

One is for the front parlor, Royal Design Studio's Eastern Lattice Large. My plan is to get a $30 IKEA Erslev large (essentially 5' x 8') white cotton rug, and then cover it with this stencil. The room it'll go in is painted a dark green, and I'd like to bring in the Chinese blue from the front hall ceiling nearby. So either it'll all go Chinese blue (with white lines), or I might add a third color -- the walls in the front room are grey, so that's one option, and the walls in the adjoining dining room are a dark purpley-red. I could even use all three colors -- we'll see how it goes.

I'm not sure about the paint -- what I have leftover are Farrow & Ball clay-based paints. Most people doing this to rugs are using latex house paint, and claim the rugs don't end up stiff when painted. Some people mix in fabric medium. I'm not sure what will work best -- any advice would be welcome. I'm not planning to dye the rug; just paint over the top.

Then there's the Large Paisley stencil from Cutting Edge. I'd originally thought about putting it over our bed's headboard, as pictured in some of their sample photos, but that's not really visible until you're well into our bedroom. There's a large blank wall that's kind of crying out for some sort of paint or wallpaper treatment -- I had originally planned on hanging saris there in a decorative manner, but the walkway is tight enough that I think that will just bug Kevin (who has to get out of bed on that side). So some kind of paint or wallpaper -- but I don't know what yet. I'm thinking I may try to block print the sheer curtains in the room first, and see how that goes, and maybe even get the headboard in (also possibly block-printed). Maybe when all that's done, the big blank wall won't feel so blank? We'll see.

In the meantime, I think that large paisley stencil is going to live in our laundry room / master closet, which also has a large blank wall crying out for a pop of excitement. In dark red, to match the washer/dryer. :-)

And someday, I'd like to paint our basement floor. Maybe in something like this (photo via Design*Sponge). So pretty.