This baby room gets its energy from the walls and windows - areas normally thought of as background surfaces. Lively, hand-painted yellow stripes and stencilled pet pictures give the walls storybook charm, while bright red trim transforms the windows into vibrant focal points.
To keep the magic flowing, the homeowners continued the theme with a painted toy chest, and pillows and window treatments detailed with stencilled bones. A traditional white crib and wicker rocker stand out against the colourful background.
Whether it's a boy or a girl, a baby in this room will feel at home well into the early school years.
Wall Stencil
On graph paper, rough out a to-scale arrangement of pictures as desired. Your finished picture sizes will vary according to what looks best in your environment. Start with about a 30 x 30 cm size and adjust up or down a few centimetres in either direction to suit your needs.
Paint your wall white or another neutral colour for the background.
[Click here to download the patterns]
Use the designs to make full-size patterns for the walls out of heavyweight acetate. Also make a stencil for the pictures' frames.
Here's how:
1. On the wall, pencil in the stencil's placement. Use a level to draw straight, plumb lines. Then paint frames for all your pictures.
2. When the frames are dry, stencil a motif inside each one. Tape a stencil in the centre of a painted frame. Dab a sea sponge into the paint color. Cover the area evenly with a blotting motion. Repeat in the other frames, using one sponge for each colour. Allow to dry completely.
3. After the stencilled motifs have dried, use an artist's brush and black paint to add whiskers, eyes, noses, and other details. Allow to dry completely.
4. Measure and pencil in 15cm-wide stripes above and below the portraits; mask off with painter's tape. (For a looser look, do not tape off the stripes.) Loosely brush on yellow paint with a 5cm brush.
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