Designing a cornice

The next thing I feel I really need to get done in the room is the curtains.  It feels so cold in there, especially at night with the blackened windows staring at me.  I would really prefer to hang the curtains from simple, silver rods, but the window on the south wall butts right up to the closet wall....

...which of course means there's no where to install a bracket to hold the curtain rod.  I actually considered drilling a hole in the wall the same diameter of a drapery rod and just sliding it through and attaching the finial inside the closet, but that would just look weird.  So I'm building simple cornices instead.  On the plus side, this should save me a bit of money, because I can use those simple (and uber-cheap) cafe rods and rings to hang the curtains under the cornice.  

Building a cornice is pretty easy, if you're not afraid of power tools.  I'm sure there are scads of other "how-tos" on the web, but I'm going to do a blow-by-blow of my method anyway.  (Mostly to kill time, since I haven't gotten any farther than my paper cut-outs!)

My design for the cornices comes from the shape I've chosen for the upholstered headboard I'll be making.  Initially, I thought I wanted a very simple, rectangular headboard, but then I saw this...

and realized that was IT.  Actually, I love the entire bed, but I don't have a cool platform bed like that, and my bedding is obviously not as minimalist.  I do love the minimalist look I've been seeing in a lot of bedding over the past five years or so, but I always seem to opt for pillows, pillows, and then another pillow or two for good measure.  Nonetheless, I think the headboard shape is going to work well in The Room, so I'll be repeating it in the cornices.  

To get a pleasing and symmetrical curve I just use some brown kraft paper, cut out a rectangle the same width as the finished cornice, draw a straight line down the center and start drawing curves to meet the line...

That top curve was waaaaay too pronounced; then I realized why - I hadn't cut my rectangle to the proper height!  I want the cornices to be nine inches at the outside edges and twelve inches at the deepest point in the center, which corresponds to the lower penciled curve.  When I had what I felt to be a pleasing curve, I folded the paper in half along the center line and cut it out...

Then I did the same thing for the slightly larger cornice that will be needed on the second window, and I have my two patterns...

Then, so long as I had my handy-dandy pattern board out, I decided I may as well make up the pattern for the headboard as well.  First, I took the pattern board up to the room and balanced it on the bed to get a sense of the size I was going to need...

And as luck would have it, the pattern board itself was just about the perfect size, so I just took my pencil and started drawing the curve right there in place to get a sense of it.   

Then I pieced together some brown kraft paper so I had a 56" x 32" rectangle.... 

and drew my curve, cut it out and ran upstairs to tape it in place.  Whereupon I felt like I had tumbled into the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears...  

Goldilocks thought the center top of this curve was too flat.

Goldi thought the overall curvature of this one wasn't pronounced enough.

Goldi thought this was just right!  Last night, that is.  Today, Goldi much prefers version number two, so it's back to the drawing board.  I my need to re-cut the cornice board patterns as well, as I just feel the curves are now too pronounced and lending yet another feminine air to the room.  

Once my patterns are perfected, I'll lay them down on the wood of my choice, trace them out with a marker and cut them out using a jig-saw/saber-saw.   I'm a bit on the fence about the wood right now.  For the headboard, I'll just use a piece of either 1/2" or 3/4" thick C-grade plywood.  Since it will be upholstered, the wood just needs to be sturdy, and plywood offers that quality.  For the cornices, I would really love to use a couple of scraps of plywood I have in Studio A, but they're also C-grade which is not really suitable for painting (I intend to paint the cornices rather than upholster them).  On the other hand, I'm going to be doing some dimensional stenciling on them as well (using Liquitex Modeling Paste rather than drywall mud), so that may solve the problem of the face not being smooth.   I'll have to do a trial run to see if the plywood will work.  Hopefully, I'll have that figured out and the remainder of my goofy little cornice tutorial ready by tomorrow.  Believe it or not, I do expect to have the cornices and headboard finished by week's end, and the curtains started, if not finished.  I guess I should quit dallying here and get busy, huh?

Manana!  

The Furniture!

I've been AWOL over a week, but spent most of that time battling a piece-of-crap carpet shampooer that was falling apart and spouting leaks every which way, and a cold that had me semi-laid-up for most of the latter half of last week (including Thanksgiving Day, natch).  These carpets are going to be the death of me,  I tell you.  I must've put waaaay too much soap in the mix and I'm having to rinse them over and over to get the soap out.  Add to that that I'm just OLD now and I can't clean carpets from morning till midnight the way I used to, not when my carpet cleaner has declared himself my nemesis to the death. He's dripping copiously from the wand/hose connection (hence the gender) so by the time I've sucked up the water in one spot, he's dribbled a pint's worth in another (I'm not at all sympathetic simply because he's geriatric, too, btw.)  And pieces keep falling off of him.  (Not a gender issue - no Bobbit in my blood).  He just...hates me.  And he's winning.   I've set aside the battle with 1/2 of one bedroom yet to clean and a few more rinsings of the library and living room and Mr. Shampoo-Rinse-Repeat-Indefinitely lies there mocking me each time I pass.   Sigh.

However!  I did manage to get a few pieces of furniture painted.  First, the "before" pics...

The drum table, which I've already shared here.  What I haven't shared yet is how I blew my $12.50 bargain by absent-mindedly using it as a base to set a gallon can of paint down and push the lid into place.  This is what resulted...

So much for my bargain!  It'll probably cost me twenty or thirty bucks to replace the glass, but at least it's do-able.   Moving on though, here's what it looks like now...

Please ignore that little dark spot where the paint rubbed off at the lower left of the door.  I was impatient.  (Soooo unlike me!  ;)  The filigree bit behind the handles are part of the handle, but I painted them white because I just wanted a touch of silver.

I found this baby on CraigsList last night....

It was advertised at $20.00, and I gave them a twenty when I walked in the door, but just before I drove away, the seller caught me in the driveway, handed me a $10 bill, and said she thought it had been listed at $10 rather than $20.  I didn't argue with her a lot, and it was the highlight of my day.   It's got that same 70s Mediterranean vibe to it as both the drum table and the dresser that's still sitting in Studio A awaiting my attentions.  (Pray I don't hit the gas inadvertently before I get it out of there or the thing's history.)   Oh, and btw, I'd like a big ol' pat on the back for resisting the call of Mad Greens on my drive home with my treasure, what with that found ten bucks burning a hole in my pocket.  Mad Greens is my latest obsession for a quick, (relatively) cheap bite.  If you live in Colorado, you've got to try them.  If you don't live in Colorado, I'm going to have a killer guest room you can stay in when you come here to check them out.    Soon.  Ish.  :)

On with the pictures!   Here's how the night-stand looks now...

I may re-do the knobs on this one in white.  The metal primer I used on them was white and they looked really cool that way, but I had intended to use silver hardware on everything so I went ahead with the silver "just to see" and now I think I preferred them white.  They're okay as is, but I think I'll try antiquing them first, as the chain I'll be using for the lamps that will hang over each nightstand is silver flecked with black, and then if I'm still not in love they're going back to white.

If my sister is reading this, she's probably going to be underwhelmed by the plain old coat of white paint,  particularly after saying I do "interesting things" with furniture.  But I was inspired by this set of before-and-after photos from Enchantresses 3 that I found via Addicted2Decorating...

 Before 

After  

(more photos can be seen on either Addicted2Decorating or  Enchantresses 3)

I was absolutely dumbfounded when I saw how that truly-ugly "before" cabinet turned into a really striking and commanding piece with just a simple coat of white paint.  As I said when I first posted a photo of the drum table, I never would have even seen it had I not first seen these before and after photos.  It's chunky, 70s-style, goo-gaw Mediterranean (I think that was actually the industry term for it); waaaay too reminiscent of my very first living room furniture "suite" from 1974.  When I hunt for used furniture pieces with a eye to re-finishing them, I generally look for pretty simple, classic lines and then use paint colors or techniques to add personality if it needs it.   If I hadn't run across and become of fan of Kristi's blog, I never would have thought of this.  She's really opened my eyes to a few things that I had long ago passed of as passe, or knew about but just never seriously considered.  And while my smaller pieces aren't as striking as this massive cabinet and hutch, a simple coat of white paint  turned them into something completely new and fresh and perfect (for my current budget and tastes).

I have a chest-of-drawers and another nightstand that will be getting the same treatment, but haven't tackled them yet.   Lawdy, you should have seen me at the end of the night after spray-painting these pieces in Studio B.  Ha, for that matter, you should have seen the spider webs in the basem... er Studio B's windows.  It looked like Christmas down there!  Speaking of, this is the first time I can recall ever using spray paint to refinish a piece of indoor furniture (as distinguished from painting furniture indoors).  I'll go more into my reasons for that tomorrow, since I expect it to be a relatively slow news day. ;)  Did I mention my husband is off till after Christmas?  :)  See how smiley I am?  :) :) :)   I made muffins tonight!     Holiday-timey muffins...and I'm off to have another one...:)  

Manana!   

Mea Culpa

This is mostly directed at my one faithful reader, Laurie:  I am so, so, so sorry I said I'd be back "after the weekend" and then... wasn't.  I won't bore you with all the tawdry details/excuses.   I'll be back FOR SURE on Monday.  Possibly sooner, but I'm making no promises anymore.  :)

How-to: Clean-edged stripes

Once again, I accomplished diddly-squat in The Room.  I spent the bulk of the afternoon driving from one Hobby Lobby to another, amassing the yardage I'm going to need for all of these floor-to-ceiling curtains I have planned.  By the time I got home and had dinner it was after 8:00 p.m. and there's just no way I feel like starting on anything after 8:00 p.m. - not when there's an episode of Medium that needs watching (which, today's paper tells me, has been cancelled again).

I forgot when I was typing up last night's blog entry that I had snapped pics of the striping process, with plans to show how to get (almost) perfectly clean edges.  I'm so glad I forgot now, as it gives me something simple to blog about today!

As I've mentioned before, in Colorado you can't find a smooth wall to save your life.  Most drywall is finished with either "orange peel" texture which looks like this...

Or with "knock-down" texture which looks like this...

Both textures can be a nightmare for faux finishers and decorative painters, but the orange peel in particular... Well, let's just say there's a special place in hell reserved for the joker who came up with that one.  You only have to take one look at it to understand why you're not going to get nice, clean lines by simply taping over it.  I obliterated the dreaded orange peel from my home in all but one bathroom and the ceiling of The Room, so I don't have a handy spot to show you here, but you can see just from this photo what happens when you tape over texture of any sort...

No matter how securely you think you've pressed down your tape, there will be gaps for paint to sneak under and you're going to end up with a messy line.  There's a super easy fix though...

Before you go in with your stripe color, paint over the tape with your wall color first.  That way, the paint that sneaks under the gaps will match the walls and disappear!  If you for some reason don't have any of the wall color, you can also use a clear medium, such as the waterborne polyurethane I used for my tone-on-tone stenciling, but you'll need to be sure it matches the sheen of your current wall color.  If you need matte, the only product I know of that will work is Modern Masters Dead Flat Varnish.  It's pricey, but you won't need much.  

By the way, the temperatures here came no where close to the high of 60 that was forecast for yesterday and today, so you can blame the weatherman for there being no progress on the drum table.  I was hoping to do that one in the my main level studio (otherwise known as "the garage"), because toxic fumes will be involved, but it looks like I'm just going to have to hold my breath and do it in my lower-level studio (also known as "the basement").   

That's it for today, and I'm definitely taking the weekend off from blogging in the hopes of having something more exciting to share on Monday.  Thanks for stopping by! 

Who let Shel Silverstein into my room?

I know it looks like I skipped a day of blogging, but my rationale has always been "it's still today until I go to bed," so in fact I'm just late!   This is really just a better time for me to sit down and chart my progress (or distract from the lack thereof) than in the middle of the day.  I'm finding it hard to get my aging buns back in gear if I sit down for an hour or more to write in the middle of the day,  so I'm grounding myself from the computer until after ten p.m.  Well, except for gmail/chat (gotta have my Evin fix).  And FB (only so I can keep up with my kids ;).  And my three games of Wheel of Fortune every morning.  Of course.

There I go digressing again.  I hinted that I wasn't happy with the tree in a reply to a comment yesterday.  Sigh.  I really, really blew it picturing this one in my head.  I was hoping for dramatic and instead I got what might be a great cover for "The Giving Tree" but is so not right in this room...

I'm going to leave it for now, but I expect that I will probably be going back in and painting all of the leaves silver.  As it is, it's just too cutesy.  The trees on the other side of the room, I think I may just leave white, but I'm going to hold off on any firm decisions about the trees until I get all of the soft furnishings in the room.  There's going to be so much added color with the curtains and headboard and whatnot that I may not need the extra color on the walls at all.  (This is one of those many instances where Having A Firm Plan would have saved me time and money.)

You might have noticed that I did some exploring as I sat in that chair (blame the early lunches - I end up sitting in that chair a LOT after an early lunch), pulling a bit more of the fabric and stuffing away from that right arm so I could see what I have to work with.  Lawdy, this is going to be a job.

In other news, I got a good start on the rest of the walls...

The colors aren't true and I'm a PhotoShop idjit, but hopefully you can see what I've done here.  Which is to use the leaf stencil semi-randomly within each of the metallic gray stripes using a clear, low-luster (satin) waterborne polyurethane.   (Benjamin Moore's "Stays Clear" in this instance, but any brand will do.)   Since the base coat is flat, the stenciled leaves give just a glimmer of a pattern to the walls.  For the stripes,  I used the same blended colors I used on the bit of trim I painted.  (Ralph Lauren Regent Metallics "Silver Bell," with Valspar's "Black Suede")

A little bit closer.  By the way, my lines really aren't bowed like that.  My camera seems to be distorting things.  Or is that a normal thing due to perspective?  Anyway, I can assure you I would not paint bowed lines, but every photo I took shows bowed lines.  I plan to go down the center of each of the gray stripes with a thin stripe of the darkest green I picked up and then the walls will be finito, baby.  Well, except for The Giving Tree.  

Another, super simple way to get the same sort of damask effect on walls is to simply rag the polyurethane on like I did here...

I lied.  In this case I actually used a semi-gloss paint in an ever-so-slightly darker shade than the flat walls, but the general idea is the same.  You can also paint the walls with a satin or semi-gloss and rag a flat paint on top, of course.  Notice what a great (scan of a) photo this is in comparison to the ones I took of my own room?  That's because I didn't take this photo; a professional photographer did.  What a luxury that was, to have good photos of something I'd done.  I can't for the life of me remember the photographer's name now.  (If you happen to see this, Jan, maybe you can help me out so I can give him due credit. :)

I'll leave you with another Random Photo of the Week.  I don't remember what I was looking for when I stumbled on this one, but the hanging lamps made me go "Wow!"  Until I looked at it for another second or two and wondered how much maneuvering you'd have to do to get into bed without knocking your head into them.  I love the way they look though...

From Interiors And Decorations (basically an ad-spam site with pretty pictures).

See you manana! 

Detour continued...

I again accomplished nothing in The Room, but I did finally switch my family room from its spring and summer to fall and winter duds and thought I'd share how easy it is to do.  My reaction the first time I heard about seasonal decorating was "Way too much money; way too much work."  By the sixth or seventh time I happened upon an article expounding on the idea, I was on board.   I really didn't put a whole lot of time or money into it, but the difference between the two looks is still pretty dramatic...

Spring and Summer

Fall and Winter

Spring and Summer

Fall and Winter

Aside from the furniture placement (which is mostly dictated by the need to pull the sofa away from the baseboard heater in the winter), the two things that make the biggest impact are the floor and window coverings.  I made the curtains, drapes and valances, but honestly don't recall now how much I spent.  The area rug in the Fall and Winter room was purchased at Home Depot several years ago and used to serve year-round.  When I got the bug to do seasonal decorating, I didn't want to invest mega-bucks in another area rug so I ordered three yards of six foot wide #8 canvas from  Chicago Canvas, hemmed the edges all the way around with a glue gun and then went to town painting it in all my favorite colors...

I used stencils for the palm fronds and filigree, and a piece of dense foam to stamp on the mosaic work.  The simple design on the outer green portions was done with regular old artist's brushes.  For well under fifty bucks, it really freshens up the room in the springtime and is such an easy project for just about anyone to try their hand at, whether free-hand, stenciled or even a solid color.  I made another, narrower one to run along the sliding glass door with a much simpler design (that I wish now I had done first because I really prefer it to the large one)...

Though it does show dirt a lot more than the large one, I like the simplicity of it.

I also dress the mantle a bit differently for the seasons...

Spring and Summer

Fall and Winter

On the kitchen end of the room which is open to this family room side, I switch out my towels and rugs, using a coral-y orange in the spring and summer and a deep green in the fall and winter.  (I didn't snap pics of that because I'm behind on laundry and all of my spring and summer towels are dirty!)

There are other things I'd like to do differently between seasons, such as GET RID OF MY SOFA, and sew up some different cushions for the wicker chairs and some wintertime covers for the kitchen chairs, but for now I'm really happy with these simple changes twice a year.  

Tomorrow, I promise hope to have progress to show you on The Room.  It's supposed to be a bit warmer here, and if that turns out to be the case I'll be doing (drumroll...) the drum table!  Woot, I can't wait!  

Detour ahead!

We're taking a bit of a detour today because I simply cannot live with my house in the filthy, disorganized state I've let it fall into over the past six weeks, so I'm taking today - and maybe even tomorrow! - off to clean.  But since I promised myself I'd blog here daily (or at least M-F), I don't dare fall down on the job less than two weeks in.  My friend Evin suggested that I post about how my obsession with the guest room re-do has caused the rest of my house (make that 'life') to fall apart, but that would become a whole new project in itself.  Imagine yourself in this scenario: You start cleaning your carpets, but don't finish up before you have to start a job for a client.  The client's room requires a lot of sewing, so your sewing room gets torn apart and threads tracked throughout the house.  The carpet shampooer gets set aside (after flooding the bathroom because the rag you tied around the faucet didn't actually contain the leak) in the hallway, because the carpet in the sewing room and two other bedrooms still need cleaning.  While out looking for fabrics for your client, you find the perfect fabric for your own living room drapes, so you end up shopping all over town for curtain rods... only to find the perfect bedding for your guest room.  Sometime in the midst of all of this, your thyroid meds prescription runs out and you don't dare ask for the doc to call it in because you've blatantly ignored four phone calls  going back four months to schedule your annual exam.  You finally finish the client's room, and days later the bed from the guest room is snapped up from a Craig's List ad.  Uh oh:  Christmas is coming, going to need a bed in there.  Hmmm, my son has been bugging me for years to start a blog.  This room re-do would be the perfect time!  Um... um...  really?  Right now, huh?  Living room drapes to be sewn, carpets to be cleaned, four rooms completely torn apart, kitchen floor getting grodier by the day, and why am I so tired lately? Ohhhh, three weeks off the thyroid meds.    Why, sure!  Why not start a blog!?!  Yeeeeesh.

I digress.  I actually do have something to share today, though it's not from The Room.  While I did make some (minimal) progress yesterday, there's not enough to share, so when I got up this morning I was dreading facing this blog.  So instead, I went to read one of my new, favorite blogs - Addicted 2 Decorating,  and bless her heart, Kristi provided me with my quick and easy blog for today.     She shared "before" photos on a "great room" she's about to begin work on and one of the photos is of the fireplace, which has rather dated brick that she plans to paint.

Now I am absolutely, positively, not one of those people whose knee-jerk reaction to this idea is "OMG! No!  You can't paint brick!!!"   Nosiree, I'll paint pretty much anything and roll my eyes at the naysayers who gasp in horror as I do.  However, dated fireplace brick can also be easily changed without painting it, so that's the cheap and easy decor fix I'm going to show you today.  

We'll start with a photo of my exterior brick, because it's what my fireplace brick looked like originally, but I never thought to get "before" pics of my fireplace brick when I first changed the color of it 15 years ago....

As brick goes, it's not horrible by any means, but my family room fifteen years ago was done in muted shades of purple and sage, and at the time I just really felt my brick needed to be more rosy-hued.  I was able to get exactly the look I wanted by simply using very watered-down paints in the tones I wanted and sponging them onto the brick.  Brick being as porous as it is, it just soaked up that watery paint like a stain and voila! I had my perfect, rosy-hued brick... 

Then about ten years ago, we did a major remodel of our kitchen, which completely opened it up to the family room where this fireplace lives.  The remodel included this granite...

Which began to dictate my color choices throughout the room, and which did not work with the rosy-hued brick.  In fact, the original brick probably would have been perfect, but that seemed ever-so-boring an idea to me.   But I knew I wanted deeper tones, so that's where I started, and again by simply using very watered-down paints and universal tints.  Here's a photo showing the progress from rosy-hued (on the left) to a bit more earthen tones...

It was better, but I also was tired of the 'neatness'  of my brick.  I think there's actually a word for it, but I'm not a mason nor am I up on masonry terms, so 'neat' will have to do.  What I mean is the tooling, mostly:  Each brick is perfectly rectangular, and each row of mortar perfectly the same width.   I really, really like an older, antique-ier looking brick, with crumbled edges and a roughness to it.  Enter one of my favorite mediums....

So cheap; so versatile!  

After deepening the color of the rest of the brick, I just troweled this on haphazardly, letting the brick show through in places and adding a bit of color on top of it to mimic the water staining you see on real, aged brick here and there, and I am so so so happy with the results...

                                         

While I know I wasn't haphazard enough to produce a truly "aged" brick, it's a lot closer to what I was wanting.  And while I'm also definitely not one of those people who worries about resale value when I'm decorating my own home, it can't hurt to head those "OMG!  No!  You can't paint brick!" people off at the pass.  Because no one would look at this brick and say "Oh, geez - they painted the brick!"  

See you all tomorrow!

How-to: Dimensional stenciling

I made minimal progress over the weekend, and my "how-to" is going to be a bit lame as my husband was holed up with office work all weekend so I had to man the camera myself and I don't even know how to use that timer doohickey so I was snapping with one hand while the other was attempting to demonstrate.  (In addition to dimensional stenciling, I can do a mean run-on sentence, eh?)

For dimensional stenciling on walls, I always use this stuff...

The numbers on the bag indicate the working time once it has been mixed with water, and it comes in 5, 20, 45, 90 and 210 versions.  You do NOT want to use the 20 I have pictured - that means you only have twenty minutes from the time it's mixed until it turns into a hard, unworkable mass of (sheet)rock.   The instructions on the bag indicate that you are supposed to add the powder to your water rather than vice versa, and I've heard/read that doing the opposite leads to dry clumps in the mix, but I've never had that problem and find it a lot easier to add water to the powder.   Mix up a small amount at a time, because it goes a long way.  I mixed up about 16 ounces (measured in a liquid measuring cup) at a time, with roughly 2/3 - 3/4 cup of water.  This can vary a lot, however.  For instance, for my first batch I used the bag of 20 minute stuff simply because it was already open, and I needed half as much water as I did when I switched over to the new bag of 90 minute mix.  I assume that's because it was a very humid day and since the bag was already open it had sucked up some of the moisture from the atmosphere.  Moving along...

Using an electric mixer to incorporate your water really helps to insure you don't have the dry clumping.  You want the consistency to be pretty stiff at first...

As you can see, it's definitely stiff - that's what you want at first, because you're now going to wait 60 seconds to allow the powder to fully absorb your water, then check it and add more water if necessary - but you're not supposed to add more powder after this point.  I found it was still quite workable after 60 seconds, so I left it alone.  One huge benefit to leaving it as dry as possible, while still workable, is that it's going to dry on the wall much more quickly.  Since you're going to have to wait for one run of stenciling to set up a bit before going next to it with another, cutting down on that dry-time is going to speed things up considerably.  

As for the stencils themselves, there are stencils made specifically for dimensional stenciling and they're much thicker than regular stencils.   This allows not only for more build-up, but the stencil itself is less likely to move or tear, so I strongly recommend using the right stencil for the job.  Both  Victoria Larsen and Royal Design Studio have several to choose from.  The one other tool you'll need is a trowel of some sort.  I used these...

which I picked up at a SALI (now IDAL) convention several years ago.  Any trowel/spatula will do though.  These are flexible, which I prefer, but I've used rigid ones with the same results.  Having curved edges is very helpful as it minimizes the problem of lines being formed in the plaster by sharp corners.  

Now, choose where you want to start...

I want some leaves attached to this branch...

But I just wanted the lower grouping of leaves on the far left, so I tried to trowel just over those parts...

It's a bit hard to see in my bad photos, but most of the leaves on this stencil have small little pointy bits that dissect the leaf in the center.  To avoid lifting and bending them, I troweled from the bottom of the grouping and then upwards to the outer tips of the leaves.  

Now that the portion I want on the tree is plastered over, I can lift the stencil off...

and as you can see, there are bits of plaster there that I don't want.  This is why dimensional stenciling with drywall mud is so much more user-friendly than painted stenciling:  It wipes right off!   

I was able to wipe these bits off immediately, but sometimes you're going to get a goof that is too close to what you want left alone, so let it dry thoroughly and then wipe if off with a damp rag.  Drywall mud is also super easy to sand, so you'll want to have some sandpaper to knock down any very rough ridges that are formed, but you can also do a lot of "sanding" simply with a damp rag and it doesn't create nearly the mess that sanding does.  I went over the entire tree with a damp rag to just smooth things out and it took me less than thirty minutes for all six trees.  

Going back a bit, see that "highly textured" bit of trunk right next to where the branch meets it in the second-to-last photo?  That happened because I tried to build my tree too fast and the lower portion of the trunk's plaster hadn't dried sufficiently.  Honestly, I don't think it's going to be noticeable in the end, so I'm not going to worry about it.  If you're more anal than I, it could easily be filled in with more plaster after it's thoroughly dry.  

A few other thoughts on dimensional stenciling:  If I were doing cabinetry or furniture, I'd use something tougher than drywall mud.  

For my fireplace mantel, I used Liquitex Modeling Paste, which is much harder when dry, but also impossible to simply wipe off with a damp rag when dry, and much more resistant to sanding.  Those are good qualities in a piece of furniture, because you want it to stand up to abuse.  With something as sprawling as these trees though, being able to go back in and "edit" is of greater importance to me.  For instance, there's a grouping of leaves I added that is going to interfere with the cornices I have planned for the windows.  No problem, a wet rag and a few minutes time and it'll be history.  After it's painted the drywall mud stencil becomes much more permanent, so be sure to go in and do all of your editing before that point.  

I'll leave you with a shot of my (almost) completed trees.  I still need to do quite a bit of painting (obviously!), and I still need a bit more of the leaves trailing onto the ceiling, but it's getting there...

Looking at this, I can't stress enough that oft-times "less is more" really, really applies to this art.  I was actually much happier with my trees on Friday night than I was after adding more leaves on Saturday. The trees had a much less 'cutesy' feel to them than they do now - they were more stark and artistic somehow.  On the other hand, and regardless of how easy it is to edit things out, it's not "off" enough that I dislike it so this is probably it.  

I hope this little "how-to" has inspired you to give dimensional stenciling a try.  I was really surprised at how little I found in the way of how-tos via a google search, and not a single video turned up.  I'll rectify that sometime after the first of the year with a video of my own.  If I can figure out how to work the video doohickey on my camera.