Design Inspiration. Planet Stencil Library.

Design Inspiration shares the ideas, projects and ephemera that currently inspire the creative team at The Stencil Library.

We are away for a week.

Rachel and I have gone to Paris.  She is staying two weeks but I will be back next Monday, hopefully with things to show and tell. In the mean time I have left you two more posts which I hope you will enjoy.  Have a lovely week, do leave us your comments.  If you need anything from The Stencil Library in our absence then Heather and Lesley will look after you.

Oh, and apologies to Teddy Thompson and anyone else watching his concert at The Sage, Gateshead.  Would you believe my attack alarm went off mid song, worse than that I did not know it was me and was fascinated as to how he got the load wailing noise from an acoustic guitar, worse still I did not know how to silence it. Big, big ooops!

  I am singing in a fortnight.   So,Teddy, if you are in Newcastle on that night then please set off your alarm whilst I'm singing, it's only fair. Helen.

A garden in your home

Whilst browsing my back copies of World of Interiors magazine, I found this decoupage wallpaper from the 1930's.

We have made large size decoupage papers at The Stencil Library, but not on this scale. I think it's quite fab.  The idea is that you bought the different elements for your garden room and they arrived ready cut from paper. They were then pasted to your wall.  If you were clever in applying and overlaying your plants, butterflies and the like, your room could look something like this.

Of course you know I am going to tell you that you can achieve a similar look with stencils.   We have a large collection of plants, flowers and garden architecture in our Garden Room range of stencils.  The narrow photograph shows a detail from the pages of the June 2008 issue of Easy Living magazine.  The page was created by Sophie Martell and the photography is by Graham Atkins-Hughes.  They show hollyhocks, lupins and foxgloves from the our collection.  Sophie has chosen spring-like, ice-cream colours for her interpretation of a garden room unlike the colour drenched printing of the John Line wall paper.  I am loving that crockery from Albert Hall (on the tray).   It will be on my wish list.  We do a lovely decoupage pack of teacups which would complement that cushion rather well.  Here is the complete page from the magazine:   

Click on the picture to see detail or better still buy the magazine. It has a lot of good stuff this month.

My friend Michelle wanted a Garden niche creating in her French farmhouse some years ago.  So we had a Stencil Library trip and stencilled the entire house.  My Mum and Sabina stencilled this nook for her.

My own bedroom has a bit of a Garden Room vibe going on. I will save photos of the full room for a 'Tour our House' post but here is a preview.   Helen.

Larger Than Life Designer Blossom

Introducing our new LTL3 Designer Blossom stencil from the Larger than Life range.  I decorated three quite different room sets with it.  Room scheme number one was stencilled over a blue black wall using taupe, sandlewood and  baltic green from the Liquitex paints range.  The orange colour was my own concoction. I have had such fun with this stencil, it takes so little effort to get good results.

Room set number two was stencilled over black textured wallpaper.

I photographed each step to help you get similar results.   This is what the stencil looks like.  There are lines and circles.

Make sure your lines are straight, I am using a plumb line to make sure that they are.

Stencil a pattern of lines.

Then add as many circles as you like, on and around the lines.

Add circles within circles if the fancy takes you.

Add furniture and enjoy.   Helen.

The final shot just got finished, I went really over board with the small circles on this one so it looks more like blossom and less like a pattern. 

I am now looking forward to working with the rest of the designs in this series. Helen

American "Vogue Living" Magazine

I am in love with a new interiors magazine!  I have always been inspired by US Vogue, but now they have come up with special edition issues dedicated to interior decorating.

At the moment, they seem to be publishing Vogue Living twice a year.  If you haven't seen this gem of a magazine, I highly recommend you pick up a copy.  Editor-in-Chief, Hamish Bowles says in the current Spring/Summer 2008 edition, "In this, Vogue Living's first Spring issue, we looked no further than the season's fashion runways for the perfect inspiration.  From New York to London, Paris to Milan, the collections were abloom with wallpaper florals, vibrant colour blocking and deft layering of exotic print and pattern - proof positive of the charmed symbiosis between trends in fashion and those in the home."  Well said, Hamish!

His statement and the magazine perfectly echoes my own thoughts and preferred style of decorating.  One only has to flick quickly through the magazine to see the wealth of colour and pattern leaping from the pages.

I love that even the index/news pages have snippets of patterns around the edges and behind the featured products.  I found the whole magazine to be a candy store of inspiration (there's that word again) and my head is just buzzing with ideas for projects.  I just want to dive right into the pages!  To whet your appetite, here are a couple of my favourite images:

                                                                                    Rachel.                           

A stencilled wedding no 3

In the early 1980's, before I was a stenciller, I wanted to be a wedding planner.  I don't think there was such a thing then. I had certainly never heard of one.  The business advisors, friends and family that I spoke to said "It won't work, every one wants to plan their own wedding or get their mothers to do it."  I listened and never followed up my idea. Now the wedding planning and styling industry is huge and does not include me!  I do love it when I am asked to help though, as was the case with the lovely Lee & Will.  The setting was a grand country house hotel in January.  Lee wanted the plainess taking from the tables.  The tablescapes were my gift to the newlyweds and there were a lot of tables so my budget was going to rely on imagination.  I bought masses of gold organza and cut a length to drape across every table.  The fabric was stencilled with sprigs of blossom to complement the colours of the bride's flowers. I used Liquitex paints for all the surfaces. The stencil was JA121    Bird and Blossom, without the bird.

  Several IKEA glass plates and bowls were bought to hold candles and flowers.  The intention was to stencil the underside of the glass and then gild it.  My gilding attempts were not my best so I stencilled then sprayed the underside of the glass with gold spray instead.  It blended beautifully with the gold of the organza. The picture shows the stencilling before the gold background was added.  This is something that can be done as a temporary decoration for special occasions, food and paint are separated by glass and the decoration can be scrubbed off afterwards.  I bought a proper church candle to sit on each of the glass plates and stencilled them with the same blossom along with the initials of the bride and goom and the date of the wedding. After firmly attaching the candles to the plates I poured water into them and floated flower heads.    Surrounding the cake were lots of matching small bowls all carrying a single flower head. It sat on top of more gold organza.  This time the stencil was JA47  but I stuck with the same colours.  

My contributuon to the decoration was simple but really added to the beauty of the day.  The hotel asked me if I would be interested in styling for them as part of their wedding package.  You bet!!!

  ...They never called me.

Rachel made a stunning job of the table tops at her sisters wedding, again a combination of stencil and organza was employed.  She mentioned it in her monogram post.   Stencilled monograms are great for a wedding and we get some very challenging ones to create.  When Chips and I got married Rachel stencilled cherry blossom over several England flags and hung them from the sides of the wedding tent at our reception. It only took her a couple of hours and made a world of difference to the setting.  The desert buffet was housed in a stencilled pavilion,  on the day it looked fab but got trashed by a wayward chocolate fountain and lives no more.

On a smaller but no less important scale, we often create stencils for customers invitations and their cakes, I shall look for pictures and customer permission then share them with you another time. Helen.

Framing the ancestors

I found this image in the World Of Interiors magazine.  It was photographed by the homeowner Rene Stoeltie.  The Stoelties have written many lovely books on interiors.  Although I could find nothing in the text to explain the portrait in this shot it appears to be pasted to the wall with a frame hand painted around it.

Which is just what you would do with our Print Room Swag stencil. The frames are stencilled onto the walls and the portraits (photocopies not originals!!!!) are cut to fit them. Nifty huh?  Helen.

New Stencils from Country by Mail, Sweden

We've written before about the Swedish Mail order company, Country by Mail.  We had discovered them because we were supplying stencils to them and upon browsing their web-site, found that they had all sorts of wonderful home accessories.  If you are a fan of that pale, slightly shabby chic scandanavian style, then this is the site for you.  Recently, we had designed some custom stencils for them to sell and I thought I would share them with you.  I am particularly fond of this recipe for apple pie in French.  I think it would look great in a kitchen along with our Shaker style Basket of apples stencil:

Here are a few other of the new stencils we made for them.  We made 5 different latin herb names, but I am only showing one example.  You can see the others on their site.

If you like them, you will have to purchase them from Country by Mail.  They ship worldwide.  Their site is in Swedish, but despite only knowing one word of Swedish myself, I did not find it a problem to navigate.  To see the stencil section, simply click on "Schabloner".  Also, they speak perfect English so if you have any enquiries or need help, you can e-mail them info@countrybymail.se.

We recently added a new range called "In Your Own Words" to our site which is a range of over 40 different fonts and you can have us make up your favourite quote or saying or name as a stencil if you fancy having your own text in your decor.  Rachel.

Vera Wang's fab frock

Regular readers and friends will know that Rachel and I love to stencil our clothes.  I was overjoyed to see that Vera Wang may have been flourishing a stencil brush on this fab frock.  It is featured in her advert for Princess Perfume. Stencilling clothes is both satisfying and easy. If Vera's dress does nor suit your shape or budget, you could stencil your own creation. For a similar look try one of our swags and stencil it with Liquitex acrylic in Titanium White .  I just looked through our catalogue and would probably choose NC115, a versatile pearl border.  We even have a nifty skull and crossbone stencil should you have the hat to decorate.  The tassels on Vera's stencil are fairly similar to a design I bought many years ago for my FIRST ever stencilled clothing project. I used the tassel with the rope from TP18. Here I am wearing it sometime in the late 1980's. I was going to my friend Sylvia's wedding.  I still have the jacket! Helen

PS. I still have the hat too.

Stencilling with Blacklight Paints

If the thought of blacklight conjurs up images of dodgy nightclubs in the 80's, think again.  Jeff Raum of Muracles (who we have featured in a previous post) sent us photos work he had just finished in a bowling alley using blacklight paint with our stencils.

Jeff chose to use MD79 Starburst, MD72 Time Tunnel, MD71 Nebula, MD74 Black Hole and MD75 Galaxy in different sizes and all from the motif section of our Modern Design range.

It is a very cool effect we had first seen used by Gary Lord of Prismatic Painting Studio on his booth for last year's SALI convention (also using some of our stencils).  He had tented his entire booth in stencilled black fabric so that you got the full effect when you entered.  He sells the blacklight paints, stating that they are excellent for use in children's rooms, bowling alleys, night clubs, media rooms and restaurants.  The beauty of them is that they will show up under any light, but really flouresce when under true ultraviolet black light.

As an added dimension, Prismatic Painting have also created special 3D glasses so when viewed wearing them, the stencilling will float at different depths.  Mind blowing!

These would only work well in certain commercial spaces or children's rooms, but in those places, what a fantastic and fun variation on straight stencilling. Rachel.

How To: stencil With Oil Crayons

Oil crayons are sold in art stores, stencil shops and at The Stencil Library .  They are an oil based paint in stick form. Turpentine, mineral or white spirit is the solvent that is used to clean your brushes and stencils afterwards.  The crayons have a protective skin on them which re-grows if the crayon has not been used for a while.   Break this by rubbing the crayon firmly onto a plate or other non-porous surface.  Use the plate as a palette and scribble the colour onto it.  Take up the paint by circling a stencil brush into the paint. Then apply the brush to the stencil.  You will need a brush for every colour that you are using.

If the surface needs to be varnished once the stencilling has been applied, wait a couple of days before doing so.  Stencilling with oils sticks takes longer to dry than stencilling with paint.  H.