Life in Eight has Come to Visit (DIY Wall Stencil Download)

Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week! I am enjoying the (almost) spring weather today, knowing that next week it will be in the single digits. I am still working on the vanity for our bathroom disaster makeover, and it has been THE hardest piece of furniture that I have ever stripped! I have no idea why, but the paint just didn't want to come off. Now that I've sanded it, and painted it, I've realized that the stain from under the paint is bleeding through. I've learned the easy fix for that, and I'll share that with you tomorrow. I'm purposely lacking pictures of it, because I don't want to reveal any of it until it is finished. But I'll give a sneak peek of it tomorrow. Today, I want to introduce you to a new blog that I came across. Gaby blogs over at Life in Eight, which is about organization and decorating. I L♥VE her style! I was reading about her bedroom makeover, and when I saw that she designed her own stencil AND is sharing is with us for FREE, I emailed her right away and asked if she would share the post with my readers. I'm so happy that she accepted! Please take some time to check out her blog, you will NOT be disappointed! So here is Gaby....


Hi! I'm Gaby from Life in Eight and I'm super excited with Jill's invitation to feature the first part of our master-bedroom reveal at I Know the Plans I Have for You. Thanks Jill!!

In this post I'll show you how we stenciled our feature wall and survived the process! (If you are curious to see how the room turned out in the end you can also check out the second part of this reveal here where I re-upholstered a second-hand divan base) I hope you enjoy it!

Master-bedroom Reveal {Part 1}

I've been telling you about this master bedroom reveal since I started blogging almost three months ago. Apologies for teasing you for so long!! I've been putting it back because there are several things about our master bedroom overhaul that I want to share with you but, as it'd be too much for one post, I've decided to split it up in two.

So let's start from the beginning: the before pictures. Actually, I don't have any. Ooops!. I mean, I didn't purposely take any photos before we started working on it (It won't happen again. Promise!). In my defence, all this was done in the "pre-life in eight" days but luckily searching among the hundreds of digital pictures saved in our home server, I've found some of the photographs we took while the house was being built and here they are for you:

Did I mention before that this post is highly loaded with pictures? I don't think I did. Well, now you know :o) So let's not stop there.

I took the photo above just after we finished putting the coving up. I was playing with it in Photoshop, trying to see how our crazy ideas would look on that wall. We wanted to make a feature of the wall you see here by stencilling it. After much deliberation, Mr. Hubby and I agreed on a stencil design. The one I liked at first, reminded him of a fridge company logo so we settled for a Moroccan style one and in order to make some savings, I put my hand up and said that I would make the stencil myself... and I did! This type of all-over stencil cost between £40 and £50 but I got three big A1 sheets of acetate on Amazon for only £13! 

I started by creating the design in Photoshop, then I PDFd it and finally printed it out as a poster using 9 A4 pages that I then put together with some sticky tape. (I've saved a copy of the stencil template for you to download it here)

After that I transferred the design onto the acetate using a permanent marker and cut out the black sections using a craft knife.

So it was time to start working on the wall! We painted it silver as the base colour and we used Dulux Chic Shadow (Endurance finish) for the stencil and the rest of the walls in the bedroom.

(Please note my face of "Do you really need to take a photo with me in this state, Sweetie??!!")

I'm not going to lie. It took me a week to finish the wall. I was doing only a little bit every night after work but hey! the problem is I get bored quite easily. Someone more focused than me might be able to do it quicker!

Now as you have stuck with me for long enough, let's go straight to the end result:

Not bad, huh! I love how the silver areas reflect the light at different times of the day. This choice of colour was actually Hubby's idea. I wanted to go with white but he got it totally right this time with silver!

And as we all love before and after pictures, I have some lined up for you:

Would you like to see a different angle?

The best of all is that since these photographs were taken, we have sold all our Malm Ikea furniture and we have made several further changes!! You'll have to wait until the next episode of this series to see them! :o)

We are very happy with how our bedroom is coming together and this project is the one which has motivated us (well, me first and Mr Hubby afterwards) to re-decorate our groundfloor during 2013 following a similar style! I can't wait to get started and share every detail with you! :o)

Do you have any decorating plans for 2013?

Gaby X

Don't you guys love it! Thank you so much Gaby! I love the entire bedroom! Go show this girl some love!

Also, don't forget, if you haven't already entered, the giveaway for $150 to The Container Store is still going on!

And if you are wanting to make some new Facebook and Twitter friends, go add your link to the "Like Me" on Facebook Hop!