Reverse Stenciling

So a couple years ago, when I was feeling drawn to tree imagery, I'd repainted my room.



At the same time, I was working on refinishing an old desk (which had been my mother's ... I love that legacy stuff :) ).



I left it a little distressed on top, because I didn't want to erase its whole past, but I smoothed out the major scratching on the surface, and of course added some blue flair to the edges and legs.

I also (to my knowledge) invented for the First Time Ever the Most Gloriously Cool Technique for a Reverse Stencil Art on a Wood Surface!
Woo hoo!

Here's what I did.

First I stripped the top of the desk, and sanded it to my heart's content but did NOT finish it yet (how-to posted here.)

Then I made two tree stencils. I just sketched the trees onto the backs of old cereal boxes, and cut them out with my trusty Exacto knife.

I placed the stencils where I wanted them, and then with the foam brush I painted the varnish on within the stencil.

Once the stenciled varnish dried, I poured some regular acrylic paint onto the varnished part, and then using a dry cloth rubbed it over the varnished surface - the paint stays on the raw wood, but wipes off of the varnish easily, creating a halo effect that illuminates the tree shapes!

After that had dried, I finished varnishing the surface as I normally would, sealing in the trees at the same time!






(Sorry the photos aren't very clear ... it's hard to get the light paint color to show up properly)

Simple Mural Making

It's flashback time ...
It was the year 2007, and I was a
young(er) lady moving to the big city.





In the two-level loft I was to share with 4 lovely yoga instructors, all of our 5 bedrooms came equipped with homemade lofts.









When I arrived, my room was a bit dreary.



But it was nothing a little dab of paint couldn't fix!

First, I decided I'd make life easy and only paint the bottom portion of the 18' walls.
I chose a calm blue color ...



It's easy to get a clean paint edge across the top.

- Just mark off the height you want in pencil, grab a leveler and trace a line at that height around the room.







- Then, carefully run a strip of BLUE painter's tape (the blue kind is the type meant for these jobs: it will stick enough to allow a clean painting edge, but won't pull up the paint underneath when you remove it).

- Roll 'er on. This job took three coats.

Voila! A two-level effect.
It was nice, but lacked oomph. So I decided to go around the border (with a step ladder) and free-hand some trees, using the same color (but a smaller brush) ...
(I was terribly lazy and didn't tape up those cracks ... but I was young, we must forgive me.)

Free-handing trees is EASY.
It helps to have look at some reference images.

I drew out a rough sketch of my (really simple) technique:
- Start from the bottom and pull the brush up; let the trunk split off into branches that taper.

- Just repeat that type of stroke until the branches look full. The most important thing is to vary it, and keep adding more smaller branches.

In this type, the branches don't overlap, for a more stencil-y feel.






Meanwhile, upstairs was now looking stark.


So I went for a simple tree-house look; with a darker blue in the same family, and with a larger brush.

I loved my tree house! From the loft level, just the light blue tree border showed, and the darker branches around me completed a calm, wintry scene.

Other murals I've done in the past, for fun & practise (I'm definitely not a mural-expert (like our friend, the Mural Maker!)):
An island scene

Picasso-inspired guitar player

Just a hole in the wall


Cheers and happy painting!