Stencil it up (DIY Laundry Room)

 Countless hours and many nap times and bedtimes later, I finally finished painting my laundry room!

BEFORE: missing pizazz

AFTER:

All stenciled and framed the chalkboard.

  I didn't want to spend $40 on a stencil, so I got some tag board from the dollar store, and used items around the house to create my own stencil.  

To get a nice curve I traced a bowl (then decided on a cup since the bowl was too large).

I folded my tagboard in half first, so that when I cut it the sides would be identical.

 I opened it up and then folded it in half width wise to get the bottom to mirror the top.

With the red stencil, you can see the level horizontal line I drew and overlapped the stencil by 1 1/2" inches to create the pattern.

I tried using the outer part, thinking I would tape it to the wall and paint inside it, but the paint totally got under the stencil, so I ended up tracing the stencil where I wanted it, and using my level and ruler, and traced it out on the whole wall.  (then I had to erase a bit after painting)

Then came the painting.....  each one took about 3 coats of paint, using a small brush.

On all the walls for the background I used Sherwin Williams' Watery.  (I first tried out SW "Rainwashed," but it was too gray under the fluorescent lights).

I was going to use the next color up on the paint chip, Tidewater, and I wanted a little bit more of a contrast, so for the stencil shape I used a custom color (I hate it when bloggers do that:)

  which was just a bit lighter than Tidewater, but not as light as the next shade up.  So the SW clerk entered in a Manual Tidewater color.

I'm so glad the painting is finally done, now I get to decorate the walls and work on the other side of the laundry room.

Linking up to:
Strut Your Stuff Saturday at  Six Sister's Stuff
Modern Country Style Paint Party