Today we finished up our marble! And also worked on drapery and stenciling.

For stencils there are a few ways to get the image to come through the stencilbwi minimal bleeding.

The most traditional way is to use a natural sponge, or sponge roller, and apply the paint to the sponge using a brush, to avoid over loading it. Then while applying the sponge to the stencil you do an even build up across the entire stencil, rather than focusing on one area at a time.

My personal favorite is the “wax on – wax odd” method. For this one you fill a large fitch with a small amount of paint, dab out the end before applying the fitch to the stencil, to get rid of any blobs that may be on the end of the bristles. Then you place your fitch on the stencil and move it in a tight clockwise motion, or wax on, then alternate with a counterclockwise motion, wax off. So you move across e stencil surface with alternating clockwise and counterclockwise motions, filling in the stencil evenly.

One last method Rachel showed us was to use a wood grain brush, the kind the resembles a wide tooth comb- where half e bristles have been cut out, and apply paint in one direct, giving a streaky texture. Us ia greT for stencils on wood grain etc.
With this method paint tends to gather on ne edge of the stencil, the edge you are moving all the brush strokes towards, this can either be annoying or wonderful, as the small build up tends to resemble stitching marks. If you don’t like this effect then you simply need to clean the stencil every so often to remove any build up on the underside of the stencil.

Helpful hint is. To always have a clean bucket of water and a clean sponge handy to clean the stencil. Build up will happen and it is always necessary to clean it if you want to keep a uniform stencil pattern.