With the advent of the lock down era, most people have frantically been looking for ways to spruce up their houses. Confinement to the four walls of their house has meant, there’s not many ways to distract yourself and your old walls are starting to look dull and dreadful. This simple hack ensures an easy, budget friendly, virus friendly update to those walls, leaving enough time to go back to binge watching Netflix post wall update.
Materials Required
- Wall Paint/ Acrylic paint – Preferred color
- Contact Paper ( Sticky paper used to wrap books or stick on surfaces) for DIY stencil
- Paint roller or Sponge
- Measuring Tape
- Hand Knife
Process- Stencil Making
- Find or draw a design you’re happy with. Google, Pinterest and Instagram are good places to look for it. Terms like ‘ Damask Design’ , ‘Paisley Design’, ‘ Motif Design’ , ‘Stencil Design’ are good ones to start with. I ended up going back and forth between design choices before I finally settled on one.
- Trace out or draw your design onto the contact paper. Then cut out the design carefully using your knife. I made about 4-5 copies of the design.
Wallpaper stencil Wallpaper Stencil
Preparing the wall
- Choose the portion of the wall you want the design on. I decided to do the center of my wall and not the whole wall. So I measured out a middle portion with a measuring tape and a pencil. Marked it on the wall. Then used the same measuring tape to divide the wall up into equal sections. If you don’t mind imperfect, randomly placed designs then feel free to go for it. I wanted some sort of symmetry.
Painting the wall
- Remove the back layer of the contact paper and stick the stencil on the wall.
- Start painting with your roller or even a sponge will do. Make sure to blot off the excess paint on the roller or sponge on a piece of cardboard first, to avoid dripping of paint on the wall.
- Keep moving the stencil accordingly and continue painting until your wall is done. It took me about 3 hours to finish the whole thing.
- Try not to worry about any small imperfections that may occur as this adds a natural look. But if you are a perfectionist and cant stand to look at tiny mistakes in the design, you may use a small paint brush dipped in white paint ( or the paint color of your original wall ) and paint over any small leaks or smudges.
- Keep going until you’re happy with the final result.
- and Voila! A budget friendly wallpaper remedy for sore eyes.
