Design Inspiration. Planet Stencil Library.

More Crown Jewels

Several weeks ago, we wrote about the collaboration between Crown Paint and the Royal College of Art where students were asked to design stencils.  We displayed the winning design "Image Furniture" by Kyu Seon Lee. You can read that post here.

Now we have some photos to show you this impressive (and large!) chandelier stencil in use.  In white on black:

  In black on lilac:

In blue on yellow:

All achieved using Crown Paints.  Click here to go to their site where you can request a colour card and to see the full range and stockists, or here to order the stencil.

The stencil was designed so that it could be used as a frame to hang actual everyday objects such as mugs, cups and corkscrews from it if wished.  It is something we are keen to try and shall post the photos of the results soon.

(Photos courtesy of Crown Paint)

Rachel.

Cabbages and flowers

Along with stencils, another of my passions is flowers.  This is a cheap and cheerful tip of mine that I thought I would share for livening up floral arrangements.   When taking the outer leaves from a Savoy cabbage, do not discard them but use them to line a plain glass vase, fill the vase with water then arrange your flowers inside the leaf casing.  The water forms bubbles, appearing as little silver baubles in the folds and crevices of the cabbage leaves.  The leaves stay in this silvery state for ages and look so pretty.  I had originally filled these vases with fat bunches of broccoli inside the cabbage shell.  Perfect for a dinner party, they looked velvety and sculptural.  Unfortunately, they were a bit whiffy after a few days so I chucked the broccoli and replaced with hyacinths, a more pleasing aroma.  The hyacinths were expensive which brings me to mention another floral tip.  Mix good fakes with fresh flowers.  You get so much more volume.  These blooms smell so fabulous that you would not notice that half of them were fakes.

When the blooms fade, save the remaining few florets and float them in bowls.   On the subject of cabbage leaves, I used them at Christmas to form a bowl for some chocolates. Not all my posts are about stencilling although this is supposed to be a stencil blog.  Soooo, if you want to see a cabbage stencil or one of a hyacinth follow these links.  If you have any cheap and cheerful floral tips I'd love to read them.

Helen.

More from the great wall of china

How could I have forgotten this fabulous interpretation of of our asiatic pheasant plate stencil in yesterdays post?

I was telling you how to stencil a version of the great wall of china using plate, platter and teacup stencils from The Stencil Library's Blue and White collection.  Stencil artist Jeff Raum used the stencil then embellished with hand painting to add detail.  This design is usually stencilled with layers of flat colour.  Jeff also used a much enlarged version of this stencil to create a ceiling rose. To read more about the blue and white patterns, see yesterday's post.  You will see my version of this stencil on the photograph of the dining room floor.  Before you look at that, you may want to enjoy Jeff's take on the mandarin repeat from the Chinoiserie collection. Jeff appeared in our featured decorative artist spot in January 2008. You can see the ceiling rose and other fabulous projects. Visit the post here, Jeff  Raum is a very talented and inspiring artist. Helen

How to stencil the great wall of China

No, not that one.  One like this... or this...
There are real plates in theses picture, but I want to show you how to get the look with stencils.
This is the dining room at Stocksfield Hall a few years ago.

  I used stencils from the Blue and White collection at The Stencil Library.

  The designs were used on the walls and again on the floors. The pictures are from The Stencilled Home. The room no longer exists therefore I was unable to photograph detail so... I stencilled some paper to allow a closer look and with a flick of the computer mouse I can give you an alternate colourway proving that blue and white is not the only way to go.
Rachel shared the work of Matthew Meade with you on Design Inspiration earlier this month.  He used many of our blue and white stencils to mimic brown transferware for Country Homes magazine.
I mixed the colours on this piece of scenery for our local theatre group. Katrin Cargill interpreted the stencilled plates for Victoria magazine like this. In the background, she has stencilled palm trees.  Both of the stylists mixed real china with stencilled pattern.  The china stencils all have three overlays which makes them very simple to colour.  The first layer allows the user to stencil the shape of the crockery then the pattern is created with layers two and three.  These stencils would be fun to stencil onto a non fraying canvas such as Roclon to make dinner mats.  They are a handy size for stenciling cushion covers too...and cabinet fronts...and trays.  OK I'll stop now.

Helen
photos: Deidi Von Shaewen for World of Interiors; from Paint Colours by Kevin McCloud; Colin Poole for The Stencilled Home; Helen Norman for Country Homes (US); David Montgomery for Victoria; all others by The Stencil Library.

Something to cheer you up when the weather is foul

I am in a bit of a sulk.  After this past weekend of glorious weather, we now have a quite cold and hair-do destroying sea fret hanging over us (that's a damp mist).  And then I saw this....

.....and it quite cheered me up.  I just love everything about it.  That could be me in the photo (I favour red lipstick and have turquoise gloves).  Being British, we always expect doom and gloom when it comes to the weather forecast.  In fact, it is never as bad as we think it is.  A little rain is necessary to our island looking green and lush and our gardens fabulous and in abundant bloom.  So whilst we contend with the ups and downs of tempermental spring weather, I am going to hang this photo up so that I can look at it and think of roses, sunshine and fresh air.

Happy Spring everyone!

The photo is taken by Philip Newton.  Helen found it for me at Design is mine. 

Rachel.

How to create a stencilled patio in a weekend

I thought I would share a project that could transform an area of your garden and could be completed over a long weekend.  My assistant Fran and I made a patio (shown above) in the summer of 2000.  We used plastic planters, some concrete paving squares and stencils of course! I wiped the pots with a product called ESP.  It is an acrylic converter that allows water based paints to adhere to shiny surfaces.  Whilst the ESP was drying,  Fran and I tipped sand onto an area of grass and concrete and raked it until it was level.

We set out the concrete squares into a chess board pattern then set about stencilling them with a mosaic style fish motif and mini border.  Both stencils came from the Mosaic Range at The Stencil Library and were bought in the medium size.  We stencilled them with colours from Liquitex concentrated acrylics.  Here is the same fish motif in the small size.  Notice that it has three overlays, one for each colour. The day after stencilling the pavers, we filled the empty squares with pea gravel.  Then we positioned the pots and planted them. The pots were base-coated with black masonry paint.  I thought it may withstand frost better than paint specified for interiors.  The terracotta colour was a car spray paint and the stencils were applied with the same acrylic paint that I used for the paving slabs.  The stencil was TP12 Greek from our budget range.

The patio is the main thoroughfare for my colleagues arriving and leaving work.  Coffee breaks and lunches are taken there when whether permits, so it gets a lot of wear.

The paving slabs are now in need of a redo because they had to be dug up to lay new drains.  The contractors were not as careful with the gravel as Fran & I.  This is possibly a job for another sunny day.  I will just place the stencils over the existing pattern and repair.

If any readers can recommend any other brands of acrylic converter then please share in our comments section. British shoppers can buy ESP from Ray Munn and they will mail it. Tel 020 77369876.

Helen

In celebration of Yellow

The sun is shining, it's Easter weekend, and I'm in a yellow frame of mind.

Here are a few yellow things that are bringing me pleasure this morning: the yellow walls in Rachel's sitting room. 

They are stained with yellow mineral pigment and stencilled with gardenia flowers.
A yellow hat in our shop.
Also in our shop is a tie dyed and beaded cardigan displayed under silk lampshades.  A yellow stencilled painting of a pug dog is just visible behind it.
Another stencilled painting.  This time it shows my favourite sweet of the Licorice Allsort selection: the coconut one with the licorice core.
A dandelion in the garden.
See how the yellow vase sings in this room set showing our sticky weed stencil and look at the yellow in these photos that I took last May. They show the blossom in the fields above my home in Stocksfield.There are yellow walls in my bedroom.

  They are stencilled with flowers from our Garden Room Collection.

A yellow door, seen on a day trip to Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire.
A yellow room that used to exist in our home, but now lives on in the book The Stencilled Home. Yellow was used with the same pagoda stencil to great effect.  The artist was our customer, Linda Mills in Australia.
Katrin Cargill stencilled these vibrant yellow walls with an assortment of our Japanese designs in this picture from the pages of Homes and Gardens Magazine.  The photographer was Caroline Arber.
Apart from the last two pictures, these are only my snapshots. I'm sure if I searched the net I could bring you truly wonderful pictures extolling the joy of the colour yellow.  But you can do that for yourself.  Has anyone a beautiful photograph celebrating yellow to share with us? H.

Turning up trumps with trompe

We've just received the March/April issue of Country Home (US) magazine.  Sadly, this is the last issue as CH is another victim of the times we live in currently and will no longer be published.  In it, contributing editor Matthew Mead has created a lovely feature on stencilling and has used our china stencils to great effect.  He has taken a few plates, cups and teapot stencils from our Blue & White range (proving that these stencils by no means have to be coloured in blue and white) and stencilled them in shades of brown to compliment brown transferware china.  He suggests using these stencils "to enhance a startup collection".  What a fantastic idea!  Plate rack molding as been painted the same colour as the wall.  Then a combination of stencilled and real crockery has been placed on and around it.  "Trompe L'Oeil" means to fool the eye and I think this has been demonstrated very effectively here.

Rachel.

(photograph by Helen Norman)

Di Overton's Plasterpiece

Last October I told you that Di Overton and I were playing with plaster and stencils.  Di is author of the beautiful Designers Block blog and owner of Ghost Furniture.  This was her first attempt at stencilling with plaster.
Pretty good huh? But, this is her second.

When we experimented in my studio we had used a plaster product called Versiplast that I picked up in America.
Di, if you read this please leave a comment to tell my readers what you bought in the UK to stencil your project with.  I can tell you that the stencil she used was LTL12 leaves from The Stencil Library.  The stencil is made up of stem sections and a variety of leaves.  You use as much or little of the design as required. Di's stencilled leaves grew from the lounge area to the kitchen. Notice a tree also grows there.

It was difficult to keep my grubby hands from stroking the walls.  The result is very tactile.

Plaster can be applied through thin stencils and makes a pleasing result, but the texture will not be as dense as the stencilling in these pictures.  Di ordered her leaf design in a heavier film.  This is a service that we offer, but is not yet on our website.  To order a heavy stencil just contact us by email fax or phone.

 Visit Ghost Furniture to see more of Di's artistry and humour.

Helen.