Stamping on Walls

Sorry I've been so quiet lately...I've been consumed with preparations for our Independence Day Party! In the process of getting the house ready, I realized that since my bathroom is clean I should take some pictures of the stamping that I did on the walls several months ago. This was so easy and I would definitely recommend stamping over stenciling if you have a design that will work for you. Stamping is just so much easier and fast!

I used the Autumn Leaf Prints stamp set with various shades of green and brown acrylic craft paint to add a random pattern of leaves all over the walls. I was going for the look of leaves blowing through the room. I actually found a leaf print pattern fabric to make matching curtains as well.

Here's some tips for stamping on walls.

1. Use a craft paint, don't use ink! Even craft ink is not a good idea. Just the regular acrylic paints that you can find in the craft store in a million colors work fine. I apply the craft paint to the rubber of the stamp with a foam brush and then stamp it right onto the wall, it's that easy!
   
2. The base paint of your walls should have at least a little bit of gloss in it. I think anything other than Matte should work fine. The reason I say this is because Matte paint will be harder to clean if you make a mistake since the paint will absorb into the texture of the Matte faster.


3. Here's the best part - use Baby Wipes to clean up any mistakes. I'm sure a wet paper towel would work fine too, but for some reason baby wipes seem to clean up the paint without diluting it and smearing the color around. A paper towel with water may just dilute the paint and smear it around a little bit and may take longer to remove all the color. I read about the baby wipes technique for "erasing" mistakes and that's the only thing I tried - it worked perfectly.
   
4. A random pattern may be less stressful. My leaves could go wherever I wanted them to, so I didn't have to worry about lining anything up perfectly. I think I stamped the whole bathroom in 2 hours or so...not bad for a custom look!

I hope you try it! I was so intimidated for such a long time, and regret not having tried it sooner. Even if it's just adding a little splash of color around a mirror on your wall, or a border around your ceiling, be brave! You'll definitely get compliments. And if you realize right away that you don't like it, just wipe it off!