Toddler Boy Room Makeover – Cutting Edge Stencils Review

(Stop by and enter the Cutting Edge Stencils Giveaway, open through February 18, 2012.)

I have been desperately wanting to make over my son’s room for about a year. However, since we are not sure how much longer we are going to continue living where we are now, I have been putting it off. Basically the room was an office/man cave that hadn’t been painted in about 30 years.

I was asked by Cutting Edge Stencils to do a review of one of their stencils as a part of a room makeover and I immediately thought of my son’s room. His room also doubles as the play room, so we all spend a lot of time here, and I have been dying to make it cuter.

I started out by painting the walls with Behr Liquid Blue. The color turned out perfectly. Already the room was so much brighter and it felt so much cleaner and happier.

Cutting Edge Stencils has such a wonderful collection of cute stencils from all-over patterns, to trees, to dandelions. However, since most of the stencils are a little more on the girly side, I was drawn to the large polka-dot stencil. Benjamin loves dots and circles so I knew he would enjoy this stencil.

This is where I had a lot of trouble making decisions. A part of me wanted to just paint one wall with one color dots, like this picture.

Another part of me wanted to make only a strip of dots and to make them multi-colored. This would be more complicated, but I knew it would be more fun and Benjamin would enjoy it more.

Since I had decided to go with the more complicated multi-colored dots, I wanted to plan out what it would look like first. I got a few paint samples in the colors I wanted, I punched out a lot of holes with a single hole punch, and I glued them onto a blue/turquoise piece of paper, close to the color of the wall. Here are my favorite two choices.

Cutting Edge Stencils sent me a mini roller, the LARGE polka-dot stencil (which came with an extra single circle stencil), and a clip-on level.

They recommended using acrylic paints, but I tested them on the wall and I was not happy with the way it looked. So I used more Behr paints (I got sample sizes of different colors). Using different colors definitely made the process take longer, but it really wasn’t that bad at all.

I simply taped the stencil (the level was extremely convenient and helpful) with blue painter’s tape, painted the different colors with two or three coats of paint, and waited for it to dry. I had a large fan blowing towards the wall which helped speed the process up.

Since I was working with a textured wall (not recommended), the stencils were not as precise as they would usually be. I had to go back occasionally with the liquid blue paint to fix any spots. I doubt this would be necessary on a flat smooth surface.

I did not need to clean the stencil between each use, as long as it had time to dry. I was even able to do different colors in the same hole with no problems at all.

Here is the final result. I LOVE how it looks, and the stencil was such a fun and surprisingly easy way to brighten up this room.

I used some of the extra green paint to paint the Ikea spice racks to match. I have a few other similar projects planned around the room.