Stencil and Stain furniture with a custom made stencil!
Here's some alarming before and afters...

Step 1: Acquire Furniture Items.

I began with a nightstand that was in seriously bad shape.
Glue, dents, dings, water stains, sticker goo...you name it...
this thing was disgusting!
The redeeming feature is that they were REAL wood...
I knew I could work with it!

The stool was in comparable shape. Thankfully they were cheap at yard sales.
The crate I built from scrap wood from the garage...and spare casters.

I spent a lot of time scraping things off and sanding things down. Removed the wooden knobs off the drawers...

Step 2: Custom Stencil

I am too cheap to buy a $40-50 stencil for a project I am going to use once...
so I improvise and make my own.
I inserted my thick plastic (I got sheets of it at the thrift store, but they sell plastic for stencils at places like the depot)
right into my silhouette cameo. about a 12 by 12 pattern.
Once I tweaked the quatrefoil background I wanted...I had the cameo "cut" it. Here's the pattern file I used, if you are interested...there are others on my blog here.
This plastic is much too thick to have the cameo cut it out though.

It did score the lines though...and that's what I wanted!

Then I spent hours cutting it out with some fine tip scissors.
Yeah, it was slow going...but my son and I listened to some of the Hobbit on cd,
so that was fun.

I always put an x on the inside of where I am cutting...sometimes,
you (okay, me) are so close to something and you snap
and start cutting out the wrong parts!

Here's the secret...repositionable spray.
Keep it in place while you work!

Step 3: Actual Stenciling!

With no time to spare...I measure the surfaces of everything to
stencil and marked a tiny x on the center.
Then I lined up my stencil and started in the middle. This is kind of an eyeballing it job.

I used a parisian slightly off-white paint that I
had sitting around and a stipple brush.
You dab paint straight down over the edge of the stencil. Don't rub or the paint will seep under the stencil edge.
((It will do that a little anyway...I used my x-acto knife to clean up the stencil when it was totally dry.))

One you do the first stenciling...you wait until the paint is totally
dry before pressing it down again and painting the next piece.
But it worked pretty well, because I had so many surfaces that
needed to be painted...so I just went around until all the centers
were painted and then the first one was ready for part 2, and so on.

At first I wasn't going to stencil the sides of the nightstand...
besides I had run out of white paint! But it needed it, so I got out some
acrylic paint and did it.

Step 4: Adding a Pop of Color!

Not a perfect paint match, but close enough.
Well, they still looked boring to me, so I edged them in aqua blue.
This pop of color helped clean up weird stencil fades and stuff like that.

Oh, ya, painted the inside of the drawers too!
And used up all my aqua paint as well!

Let them dry over night.

Step 5: Next Comes the Stain!

Next day was the fun!
Staining!
I used dark walnut stain. I wanted it dark...so I painted it on with a
paintbrush and then rubbed off the excess with an old rag.
Repeated over all the surfaces. I love how it makes the stencil pop out!

Step 6: Change Up the Hardware!

Once the staining was done...the knobs and handles needed replacing.
I had a ton of random knobs I got at a yard sale...none match.
and they were gold.

I just sprayed them all brassy copper and they match perfectly now!

See how perfectly they work with the stained wood?

Step 7: Finished Matching Stenciled Set!

I love how they turned out! Perfect accents for the boys room to match the bunk bed! :)

Check out more of my crafty projects at doodlecraft!

If you like this, please vote for me in the Cabot Woodcare Contest