Sorry for the delay in posting the final pictures for this job. I left off with the Lusterstone Diamonds and leather look panels in the Family Room. The only thing left to do in this room was the fireplace. Here you see it in it’s former, boring white stage. The homeowners will be pulling out the old brass insert and replacing with something else.
Well, this is a bad quality photo, but all I have at the moment and I’ve adjusted it to death. I did the mantle with the same leather finish and painted the brass tacks along the edge. The remainder of the surround is done by striae-ing (is that a word?) layers of brass, copper and gold metallic glazes over an off-white base. I’ll try to get better photos when I return to this house in a week or so. The homeowners are going to paint the white areas surrounding the panels with an off-white now, which will warm it up and not look so stark.
On to the Kitchen/Dining Room. Here the walls were painted a blue/gray by the former owners and the new homeowners decided to keep it, but wanted to jazz it up a bit. I used a long time favorite stencil of mine from Royal Design Studios, the Scroll Allover. I had to buy 2 new stencils, the production size and the regular size, because I’ve used this pattern so many times I had to finally throw out my old ones.
And gasp… I ended up cutting my production sized one to make it much easier to do the ceiling line and baseboards. I know, I know… it was a very tough decision, but in the end, it made the job go much quicker and cleaner.
See what I mean? By cutting the stencil, I can fit the stencil right up to the ceiling line. I hate these textured ceilings. The tape doesn’t stick to them and my knuckles get all scraped up while stenciling near them. Which reminds me… remember my post about my ugly hands? I’ve found something that makes them actually look and feel much better!
It’s the "60 second fix for hands" by Crabtree & Evelyn!
I digress… back to business here…
Here is the pattern above the bay window in the dining area.
A full wall.
Luckily, the ceiling in the kitchen area was NOT textured, so I could do a little something. I used the same Allover Scroll pattern, but just did it in the reverse, blue on white and framed it out with another stencils I have had and used for years from Royal Designs, Trompe L’Oeil Beaded Molding. If you do a lot of "framing", this set of stencils is worth it’s weight in gold! Quick and easy and very elegant.
Here’s a closeer look and better color!
This shows the ceiling design with the walls in the background. It really helped to tie these two rooms together because there was very little wall space in the kitchen area to stencil.
