Somewhere right now Kelly Wearstler is laughing at me. She’s lounging about her L.A. manse in some fabulous designer gown (vintage of course), surrounded by rolls and rolls of imperial trellis wallpaper and she. is. laughing.
Things didn’t start off great. After tracing my first stencil, I started cutting, only to realize the intricate pattern was making me cross eyed with confusion. I completely lost track of the negative and positive space on the stencil and the whole thing fell apart.
I started over, re-tracing another stencil, this time dummy-proofing it for myself by taking a Sharpie to the negative space I needed to cut out. The little connectors you see within the pattern are important too. Without them, the entire pattern falls apart. I’d need to go back and touch up these spots after the design was dry to form the continuous imperial trellis pattern.
The completed stencil was pretty large which was maybe part of my problem. I decided a large stencil would let me get the job done quicker. That may have been true, but any efficiency I gained by making the stencil larger was very quickly eclipsed by how insanely clumsy and unwieldy the stencil was to handle.
I started in the corner figuring if I could be successful on that totally straight area (free of the window frame and pitched ceiling) then it would be worth it to keep going and tackle the trickier areas of the wall.
Here it is after 3 passes. At this point, it definitely wasn’t perfect but I was liking it and was encouraged to keep going.
But then everything started to go wrong. Because the contrast between my wall and the pearlescent paint was so subtle, it was difficult to judge when there was enough paint. Hence I started ending up with spots like this. *Sigh*
And then I hit the window frame and it was all downhill.
To say maneuvering the stencil around the frame was tricky would be a huge understatement. It was pretty damn impossible. Every time I peeled the stencil away I was getting sadder. I should also mention that metallic paint is not at all forgiving to work with. It was very clear what sections of the wall got hit with 2 coats of paint vs. 1.
Overlapping the stencil and lining it up just so was super time consuming. Progress was slow but that’s not necessarily something I would have minded if the result was great. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t. It was at best ok…from a distance. And while I certainly didn’t ‘t plan to stare at this wall from 3 inches away, clumps and smudges and bare spots just wouldn’t do. They would seriously keep me up at night. It looks ok in this image but I promise, it just wasn’t. Sad…
Bottom line – I decided to stop after doing this one section of the wall. I HATE when I can’t finish something or something doesn’t come together like I plan. But I hate shoddy results even more. So I have to accept defeat 
RIP imperial trellis stencil. I’m sad to see you go…
If you’re thinking of tackling an intricate stencil project like this, learn from my mistakes:
1. Avoid a wall with a lot of angles. Maybe if the wall I was working on didn’t have a window and a pitched ceiling I could have gotten better results.
2. Don’t get greedy and make a great big stencil to save time. Maybe if my stencil had been smaller, it wouldn’t have been so hard to work with.
3. Avoid metallic paint. It looks awesome but damn is it unforgiving.
So there you have it…DESIGN FAIL! Now I’m off to paint over this area and put this defeat behind me.
