Hand’s down, the biggest challenge in making an apartment look like a home is figuring out how to cover all those blank walls. Tapestries are so opium den and Monet posters are so wrong at this stage of life. I always cringe a little bit when the designers on Trading Spaces talk about “making art”, but they may be on to something. If you can’t afford to buy art on your assistant salary (and who can?), it just may be time to make some.
For those who don’t/can’t/won’t draw, stencils are a gift from God. Lucky for you and me, the man who directs and edits these videos is also a cartoonist and kindly agreed to draw a really big horse. Download and print out our horse stencil (8 pages total) here:
horse stencil page 1
horse stencil page 2
horse stencil page 3
horse stencil page 4
horse stencil page 5
horse stencil page 6
horse stencil page 7
horse stencil page 8
If you’re not an equine enthusiast, this place has a dazzling array of stencils.
From there, you’ll need canvases. I bought mine at a big chain arts and crafts store as I suspected they would be cheap. And since the heavens were throwing me all kinds of crazy gifts, there was a sale: $2.99 for a 16″x20″ canvas. I bought four.
If we could do this again, we’d transfer the paper stencil on to a large piece of plastic (available at craft stores) so the stencil wouldn’t be quite so flimsy. If you do that, you could paint with acrylics and stencil rollers if you want, since plastic will stand up to a little more wear and tear. We decided to use spray paint and just taped down our paper stencil with masking tape. Then we touched up the final painting with a brush.
Since I have not previously extolled the virtues of spray paint, please let me do so now: spray paint is fast, easy, and calls for zero clean up. You just can’t say that about many things in life.
