painted walls: bird stencil with faux finish

i love experimenting with different faux finish effects on walls ... half the walls on my house has been an experiment!  i painted our powder room walls and used bird stencils from martha stewart crafts that i bought at michaels and applied a faux finish underneath ... here's how it turned out ...

this is how i did it:

1.  i painted a base coat of primer to cover what was underneath (another prior experiment)

2.  i painted a coat of greyish blue

3.  i prepared a mixture of brown paint with glaze and casually brushed vertical strokes to give it that aged look

4.  i did the same thing with cream-coloured paint

5.  i used the bird and berries stencil and randomly placed them all over the room using the cream-coloured paint

6.  put the finishing touches on the room (ie curtains that i made, towel bar, mirror etc)

this is what i needed:

1.  base colour paint (you can skip the primer if there's nothing dark underneath)

2.  lighter colour paint than the base colour (must have a good contrast)

3.  glaze

4.  stencils

5.  paint brushes / containers

Birds and Berries Stencils by Martha Stewart Crafts

(available at Michaels)