On Color, Stencil Choices, and Crazy

During the weekend, W proposed a great idea. Well, I should say that W already recommended this idea before I went wild with green samples, but at that time I just didn't want to listen. After my painful tries, I was all ears. He reminded me that we already had some green paint. Our upstairs guest/boys bathroom is a green color but it's a very bright, sea foam-ish green with hints of blue. W also reminded me that it would look entirely different in a darker space. What the heck, why not? 

In our bathroom:

In the pantry:

Of course, this third-try coat was so much nicer than what was in there before. It was softer and looked great! It also helped that we had plenty of it and was our favorite price: free!

With that problem finally solved, it was on to my next... how to get a pattern on to the wall. If you remember, I was leaning toward a Moroccan style pattern from my idea board. Then I read House of Smith's entire pantry redo post and fell in love with her Quatrefoil pattern. Of course, this is so last year in DIY blogland since it's replacement with Chevron, BUT that means many projects and resources are already available to late-comers like me! Woot woot! 

While checking out others' projects, I found a few options:

1) Purchasing a stencil-- the most recent project I saw was AtoZ's foyer. She was given a Royal Design Studio Stencil to try out and review. If only I was so lucky! The stencil is a perfect pattern, but it's $44 and I was worried it would be too big for our small space. Plus, I'm impatient and didn't want to wait for shipping and gathering supplies.

2) Purchasing vinyl-- House of Smith used this method and I found a seller on etsy who was superbly sweet and helpful. It simply goes on like a sticker.

3) Making a stencil on my own-- wanted to avoid this option at all costs as it just sounded like it would take for.ever. Welcome to Heardmont just completed a long closet using this method {and it's beautiful!!} so I knew it was do-able. BUT it took her a collective 10-12 hours to do it all. She's got the luxury of time without little ones, I simply don't.

So which option did I pick?

I went with #3. Sheesh. I was really wanting to try out the vinyl, especially since it seemed like the easiest method. But I just couldn't justify spending $280 in such a small space when we could still really use a new downstairs rug or breast pump or awesome Nikon camera I've had my eye on.

I got my free printable stencil here. Printed it out on card-stock and then cut it out using an X-acto knife. I cut while over a cutting board to avoid ruining any surfaces. Worked out just fine, especially since I already had all these supplies. 

So, since I had already painted the bottom part green, I took the crazy route to getting my stencil on that wall: tracing my stencil with pencil and then hand-painting the whole thing. The exact thing I wanted to avoid because: I don't have time for this! Really, don't try this at home.

Here is my trial run results:

{taken with an iphone at night, no less...}

{This took me about 30 mins}

But, am I excited? Am I loving the results? HECK YES! And surprisingly, it has gone much quicker and painlessly than I thought. I think finding the green caused more of a head ache. Although I will confess that when I was doing the trial run of tracing and then painting, I kept telling myself how ridiculous and extreme this was just to get a stinkin' pattern on a wall who's door will be closed 95% of the time...All in the name of DIY, eh?