Do you ever see those gorgeous old French Bistro’s that have lovely gold typography all over the windows, and think, I’d like to do that. Want to make your own projects stand out from the crowd and get the wow factor? Well this is how you can!
What you need. A stencil, gold aerosol spray, black aerosol spray, masking tape and some old newspapers. The cabinet I’m using is painted with Annie Sloan Paris Grey on the outside and Cream on the inside. These colours look delicious together.
Step 1. Get a piece of furniture with glass in it! The piece I’m using as an example is ideal. It has it’s original old rippled glass (this lets you know it’s vintage, as modern glass is machine made and very flat) and the squares are just the right size for me. Clean the glass, inside and out.
Step 2. Get your stencil, we sell quite a few of these. The one I’m using is one we designed ourselves, Hotel Royal Eiffel £14.95. It’s the perfect shape for this job, and it helps give the impression that this was a piece of furniture in an old French Hotel (who knows, it might have been really!)
Step 3. Attach your stencil to the INSIDE of the cabinet/glass, don’t have it on the outside as it may scratch off or get damaged when someone cleans it.
Use masking tape, then cover the surrounding area with newspaper. Paint gets everywhere, especially when using aerosols. Make sure the stencil is round the right way so it reads correctly from the other side of the glass, this is important! I’ve already used the stencil in the pic above for the other door, which is why it’s gold.
Step 4. I add some weights to the back of my stencils to stop any bits of the flapping up, just a pile of old coins should do the trick.
Step 5. I bought the spray paint from Halfords Car Centre, Ford Solar Gold at £6.49 and Matt Black at £7.49 for a 300ml can. Use the gold aerosol first, spray from about 50cm away and spray in a regular pattern – have a practise on some old cardboard first. Wait for it to dry, it doesn’t take too long, about half an hour in a warm room. In the pic above, I’ve sprayed the area and removed the weights/coins.
Step 6. Carefully peel off the newspaper and the stencil to reveal your reversed golden image, it should look something like the picture above, which looks good. The next bit makes it look even better.
Step 7. Now put the stencil down again, but this time make it a little bit offset – by that I mean down a bit and across a bit, so it produces a ‘drop shadow’ effect. Check out the pic below to see what I mean.
Step 8. Now use the black aerosol, same method (weighing down the stencil again) as before and let dry.
Step 9. Moment of truth, carefully peel back all the masking taped bits and the stencil. Voila!
Be careful with this area when cleaning, you don’t want to scrub off all your hard work. When I use aerosol paint on my stencils I don’t bother trying to clean it off. It should only leaves a very thin layer, so allows the stencil to still be used time and time again.
You might have noticed that I’ve painted this cupboard in Annie Sloan Paris Grey, when I paint a piece with glass I never use masking tape, I just paint over the glass, then Clear Wax. Wait for the wax to dry then use a paint scraper to remove the paint. I find it a lot easier than using lots of masking tape.
Dovetails Stencils can be used with most paints including Annie Sloan Chalk Paint American Paint Company Caromal Colours C. C. Caldwell Maison Blanche Van Gogh Chalk Paint MMS Autentico