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The Turquoise Home

How to Stencil Curtains

Last Updated: | By: 94 Comments | Filed Under: DIY Projects, Living Room This post may contain affiliate links.

Hey y’all! Well I’ve got a project here for you that I’ve been working on slowly for almost a month.

This is such a cheap way to make a huge impact. Similar curtains retail for $200 PER PANEL! But you can make them for less than $100 for two panels including the stencil! I made four panels, so my cost came out to less than $30 per panel. So worth it! And everyone always wants to know where they came from! | Details at TheTurquoiseHome.com

I’ve been looking for the perfect curtains for my living room for a while now. And while I’ve found a few fabrics I like, my ceilings are 12 feet high, so it’s expensive to buy fabric for four 12-foot panels. Yikes! I used the shorter IKEA Lenda curtains in my master bedroom, and knew I loved them. And so, I bought the bleached-colored Lenda curtains in the 118″ length. At $34.99 for two panels, you can’t beat that!

And then I went in search of my stencil. I’ve been eyeing the Moroccan trellis stencils for months. I have plans to use the stencil on a wall in the future, so I bought something I could use on my curtains and on my wall. I finally settled on the Marrakech Trellis Allover Stencil. These Moroccan trellis stencils are so on trend right now, and I just love them!

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OK, now to the actually stenciling. First, let’s talk about paint. I used craft acrylic paint mixed with Martha Stewart’s fabric medium. I was naive and didn’t realize how much paint I would need. You need a LOT of paint. I mixed several paint colors together, along with the fabric medium, so definitely write down your formula in case you need more. I ran out right before I finished the first panel. So glad I had the formula!

Here’s the formula I used:
2 oz. gray
1 oz. silver
1/2 oz. burnt umber
3 oz. fabric medium

And that only covered almost a whole panel, so in the end I’d say I needed 8 oz. of paint for one panel. I had to go back to the store and get more paint.

The color I was going for was a greige, and I love it! It looks like a gray in liquid form, but once it dried on the curtain, it looked more brown. So, it’s exactly what I was trying to create. Yay!

You’ll need a large space for your stenciling. I cleared a space in my living room, so that I could stencil after Miss A goes to bed. (And it’ll be dry by the time she wakes up in the morning.) You’ll need something to cover your work space … unless you want paint on your floors. I used a queen bed sheet, and it worked pretty well. No paint got on the floors. But it did move around some, which makes it hard to keep the curtain straight and even. So when I stencil the rest of my panels, I may make something out of old cardboard boxes.

That is one of the biggest challenges – stenciling the curtain in a straight line. The Lenda curtains have several seams running down them, so it helps a lot in trying to keep everything straight. And you just paint the curtain. It only took me a about an hour to paint it. I highly recommend finding something soft to put under your knees. My knees hurt the next day from crawling around on the hardwood floors.

I love the way this one turned out and can’t wait to complete this project and see them all hanging in my living room.

I only have one panel finished so far, but I finally got to the store today to buy more paint. So now I can paint the rest of the curtains. I plan to reveal them all when I reveal my Christmas mantel! You get a little peek here, but there’s more to come.

(Update: Check out all of the stenciled curtains in my Living Room Reveal!)

Have you ever stenciled anything? If not, what would you stencil?

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Comments

  1. Becca says

    Looks great! I don’t think I would be able to keep them straight. Thanks for sharing! Stop by my Friday’s Five Features tomorrow and link up this post (and others)!

    Reply

    • Laura says

      Hi Becca, the seams down the fabric definitely helped! They aren’t perfect, but you can’t tell when they are hung up. 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!!

      Reply

  2. carissa says

    looks great! i have high ceiling problems too:) i tried stenciling them with that exact stencil, but it just wasn’t turning out how i envisioned. love the gray!

    Reply

    • Laura says

      I definitely had moments where I wasn’t sure it was going to work, but I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. And it’s not perfect by any means! 🙂 Have a great weekend, Carissa!

      Reply

  3. Lauren @ The Thinking Closet says

    Holy awesomesauce, Batman! I’m pinning this because we have the exact IKEA curtains that you do, but they’re in a box in the basement because I needed a change. Um…hello! I can change them myself with stencils! Pinning and tweeting this post, immediatamente.

    Reply

  7. Kylie Helm says

    Your home is just so beautiful. Everything you post has me drooling! I have several panels of plane white “sheet” curtains in our home, and I would just love to stencil them like this! Thank you for the inspiration!

    Kylie @ Absolutely Arkansas

    Reply

    • Laura says

      Oooooh, your curtains sound like the perfect candidate for a stencil makeover. I have some plain curtains in my bathroom that I’d love to makeover as well! Thanks for taking time to comment!

      Reply

    • Laura says

      Thanks Christy! Mine aren’t perfect, which is why there aren’t any close-ups. 🙂 But nobody sees the imperfections except for me. You could so do this DIY! 🙂

      Reply

  10. Sarah says

    These look great. I started stenciling some curtains using the same paint and fabric medium. I kept ending up smudging my paint when I moved the stencil. Tricky business. But these look so good I think I need to revisit this plan.
    Thanks for sharing.
    Sarah
    Creative Ramblings

    Reply

    • Laura says

      Hey Sarah! It is super tricky to make sure you don’t smudge the paint. And my curtains aren’t perfect by any means. I was VERY super careful when I moved the stencil, though. I tried to make sure I was setting it in the right place, and didn’t move it around once it was on the fabric. And every so often, I would wipe the bottom of the stencil to make sure there wasn’t any paint on the under side. Definitely give it another try! And I’d love to see the final product!

      Reply

  12. Carrie This Home says

    Your curtains turned out so beautiful! I’m stopping by from Give Me The Goods Monday.
    I would love it if you’d link this post (and any other craft, DIY, recipe posts) to my blog hop. I’d love to see you there!

    Reply

  13. noorain says

    wow great idea, you are truly very talented…loved your website keep up the good work..I plan to stencil one of my old curtain too thanks for the great idea 🙂

    Reply

  16. Cindy says

    I saw your curtains in your living room reveal. You did a great job and your room looks fabulous!

    Reply

    • Laura says

      I didn’t wait long, but tried to be careful. If I noticed the paint was getting under the stencil I wiped it off. And I did end up with some smudges. But I was too impatient to wait. 🙂

      Reply

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