Decorating with Stencils

Plaster makes a plain vase something fabulous!

By Victoria Larsen

I'm SUCH a thrift store FREAK because I find such bargains and it's a total THRILL to turn them in to a treasure for my home. This rather large vase is a ceramic find I found at the thrift mart for $10.00........ now mind you, this puppy is about 2' tall and 14" around so it's no small find!

The person who chose to give it away had sprayed it with "texture" stone spray in gray and it was fine the way it was, truly! But alas, I had OTHER ideas the very second I saw it.

In fact, a woman was standing next to me and I was so afraid she was going to grab it that I snatched it up with great effort (lifting this lug in to my cart was NO easy chore! It was way heavier than I had suspected!

Once I carted it home, I took it out on the back deck, sorted through all the new plaster designs I had in search of something that would fit just perfectly. The new English Victorian Corner and Border set were just the ticket!

I mixed up powdered "Fix-all" (a plaster product found with the joint compound in most Home stores across the nation) with white glue and water, (My mother Fay's special recipe!) making a creamy solution to work with and taped the stencil down.

Now mind you, these thicker stencils are NOT that flexible and I learned a lesson here: When you're plastering the wall, you can go over and over the design with your trowel with no problem. You CANNOT do that on a curved surface! What winds up happening if you do is that design begins to "smear" because you never get the stencil back against the surface quite the same way twice.
Go over it only once, accept the detail you have or start over.

I then simply painted it light brown, sponged over the design with a deeper brown, then lightly went over only the raised design with gold acrylics on a flat end stencil brush and look what resulted!

It now sits in my office at one end of a massive deep brown stone fireplace. It looks like an awesome antique!

When plaster stenciling a curved surface, tape the stencil on then hold the openings down firmly against the surface, moving across the stencil and holding each section down as you plaster. If you hate how it came out, scrape it off and do it again. That's the total beauty of raised plaster designs! We get "DO-OVERS"!

Purchase this stencil

Exciting News!
Victoria's husband Dana has finally released his fabulous "Smooth Jazz" CD that includes Victoria's single "Gravity".

Give a listen for free at
cdbaby.com
today!
Click here!