Design Inspiration. Planet Stencil Library.

VN7 Chain Lightning stencil, worth another look.

I never tire of seeing our VN7 Chain Lightning stencil. I enjoy seeing our customer's pictures of their finished projects with it. The stencil has appeared in a film set, some rather famous people have purchased it and it is one of our more popular pins on Pinterest.

Rachel E stencilled it in the lounge of her Art Deco home, we featured it on our blog in 2014 and people all over the world seemed to love it! I felt that it was worth another showing off. The film set designers and one of the famous people chose to stencil it in the same colours that Rachel had used; which were Sunset Gold from The Stencil Library stencilled onto a blue/black wall covered with a Farrow & Ball paint, it looks gorgeous in pale colours too. Today a Sunset Gold and a VN7 Chain Lightning stencil left our packaging desk for a new home overseas.

The stencilling can be applied with a foam roller or a large stencil brush. VN7 is a tough stencil and you can get a lot of wall space decorated with it.  It is a good choice for ceilings too because the design is robust and there are no floppy bits! 

Bon voyage, Chain Lightning. I hope that you and your new owner create fabulous finishes.

Helen.

Chinese New Year; Year of The Pig, stencilled of course.

Happy Chinese New Year, it's the year of the pig and 'Poppa's got a brand new pig bag'. You can make your own, perky, porcine themed apparel with our 'Pigs Might Fly' stencil and some metallic paint. 

I just love the gleeful expression on their faces! The bag was stencilled by me, available from For Queen and Corgi.   

 

A Stencil of A Flight Of Swallows

We have designed a companion for one of our favourite stencils, the 'Y10 Three Swallows' The Y10 stencil features a swallow motif in different sizes.

They can be stencilled as a swarm, in a row or as single motifs. Stencil Y-10 is versatile and inexpensive. Now, meet the new kid on the flock.

The new stencil helps those that have less time or confidence to create a swarm or 'flight' of stencilled swallows. The beginning of the flight has been created for you on stencil layer 1. The direction of flight depends on which side of the stencil you wish to use.

Creating a stencilled flock, swarm or flight is a handy solution when wonky ceilings, odd placements of doors, niches, windows and other obstacles prevent a more formal style of decoration. The flight could provide an alternative to directional signage, eg. 'Follow the Swallow' whereby a trail of stencilled swallows leads to an exit, or the washrooms or garden.

I have stencilled a long skirt with the swallow flight too, I was told it was 'Just the right side of creepy' which actually was meant as a compliment.

All the small swallows (stencil 1) are applied first. When you are happy with the flow of the 'flight' start to stencil the medium-sized swallows over them (stencil 2). You do not need as many of these as you did with layer one.

Finish with a few motifs from layer 3 The three sizes of swallows gives a sense of perspective to the decoration.

Here are a couple more examples of decoration from our various stencils of swallows.

The new 'Flight of Swallows' stencil is available by contacting us, it is not on our website. I will put details of the new stencil in the comments section below. Links to other swallow stencils are VN300 and Y-10.

Helen.

Stencil inspiration using VN5 Shadows, an optical Illusion stencil.

Our VN5 Shadow stencil must be one of our simplest stencils and it is one of my favourites, we were inspired to design it after seeing some knobbly, rubber floor tiles. There are two layers to the VN5 Shadows stencil and they repeat so that you can stencil large areas with speed and accuracy. After painting the base colour onto your surface mix a darker and lighter shade of it to apply through the stencil. I went one stage further with my application and applied white acrylic paint through one of the stencil overlays then applied Raw Sienna acrylic over it. I faded out the colour to expose areas of white paint. This method further accentuates the illusion of a highlight. I could have applied a stippling of white highlight after stencilling the Raw Sienna but I found this way round looked smoother.

Rachel chose Canton Green from Little Greene Paints as the base colour for her hallway.

She mixed some of the Canton Green colour with white acrylic paint for the highlights, then, for the shadows she mixed Black and Burnt Umber with the green.  I think the effect is gorgeous. Rachel did not do the same 'arty highlight bit' that I had, it was not needed. So, with a little patience, a little paint and a stencil you can create some fabulous effects. I would recommend two of our extra large stencil brushes for a similar project or our large double ended brush.

Helen.

Chinoiserie with stencils.

This time last year I was creating sample boards and fabric for a client that wanted a handpainted Chinoiserie room with stencilled wallpaper and matching fabrics. These are a couple of shots from the samples, in case you are inspired to stencil something similar for yourself or your customers.

The stencil that I used for the samples was the Chinoiserie panel CH4 from our Chinese Style collection. The panel can be used independently or as part of a set of four stencils which repeat in sequence to make a long and very wide decorative border.

The minimum depth of the border is 44 inches (1118mm) that size is described as the 'small' panel on our website, but you can order it up to 96 inches deep (2438mm) and we describe that size as X. If even more height is needed consider marrying it with a contrasting design above or below the panels. I add extra butterflies and birds to further extend the height if the area is very high. Using all four of the panel stencils will give the effect of handpainted Chinese wallpapers of the 18th-century. The stencil that I used is 96 inches high but I only needed to use a section of it for the samples. I have reused this same stencil for over twelve years now and it has travelled to many countries. When I decorate the room for our customer I will have the luxury of a using a new set and that set will belong to them after I have completed the project. One of the advantages of using a stencil to create a mural such as this is that the stencil gives the shape, structure and form but the stenciller controls the colours and can make each flower bird and butterfly differ from the next by way of colour choice and shading. 

The fabric that I used was silk, if the budget does not stretch to real silk there are some good fakes that are washable and give an effect of silk. I used a silver leaf wallpaper to stencil onto. This again is top of the range. If your budget does not allow such luxuries select a less expensive wallpaper or stencil directly onto the painted wall. The advantage of this paper is that the client will be able to remove it, roll it up and transport it to a new home if desired. There are a few tutorials on 'how to stencil onto fabric' on this blog and I have put a couple of them onto YouTube. A quick and simple demonstration of stencilling onto material can be found on this link.

Helen.