Try This At Home: Stenciled Lettering

I love the look of vinyl lettering, but I'm not a fan of the price tag. I had seen several different ideas around the Internet about painting letters by making your own stencils, so I figured I'd give it a try. The first step is to decide what font to use and print out your letters/numbers on card stock. Most methods I had come across said to cut out the letters with an exacto-knife, so I tried that with the first 3 letters. I thought it took way too long, and was too difficult, so I started just cutting out the black letters with scissors. Since you are going to be tracing it onto your surface anyways, I figured it didn't matter which way you did it, and the scissor method was a lot quicker and more user friendly :).

Then hold or tape your letters to the surface and trace the outline with a pencil. This is great because it allows you to erase or adjust things before you actually start painting. Once the letters are penciled on where you want them, use a fine brush to fill them in with paint. You need a pretty fine brush to do most fonts, especially if they are decorative or cursive. I used a small brush for the main letters, and a tiny makeup brush to do the detailed part.

I am pretty happy with the results and have a few more projects in mind around the house. Now we just need to build the inside of the pantry! :)