I've moved from home to home - first a couple of apartments and then houses - and I know how fun it is to decorate... after the hard work of painting or wallpapering the walls has been done. Wallpapering was the worst - what a lot of work that entails! I made a vow after the first - and only - time I did wallpapering that I'd never do it again.



So when I feel in the mood for a different look in a particular room, I simply repaint the walls, and then add whatever decorations suit me. I've recently started experimenting with stencils.

Applying stencils to a wall is easy - a fact I appreciate greatly - but there is such a wide variety of patterns on the market - either online or from your local home improvement store - that I can make quite sophisticated designs, and all in just minutes.

Most people use stencils just to make wall borders, but there's no reason to confine yourself to just that, considering all the designs available these days. You can stencil an entire wall from floor to ceiling and make it look like a piece of art.

There are many places on the web that offer stencils...and ideas on how to apply those stencils to your walls in order to create works of art that will be a pleasure to view for a long time.

You might think that stencils can't produce works of art, but you'd be wrong. Stencils these days are actually quite complex, with designs coming with several "overlays" so that you apply one coat of paint with one overlay, wait for that to dry and apply another, and thus you can do really complex full-color designs such as fully-realized animals, fruit and vegetables, or even "trompe l'oil" (fool the eye) designs such as a Tuscan wine cellar!

Dressler Stencils (http://www.dresslerstencils.com) is one of many websites that offers border and frieze stencils of all kinds, as well as full color wall stencils (mural elements) depicting horses, squirrels, marsh birds and more. The site also has free pdfs explaining the tools needed to create the stencils, as well as techniques and tips.

Stencil Ease (http://www.stencilease.com/) is another site that offers stencil designs in a vast array to stimulate your imagination. In addition to the stencil designs themselves they also offer te appropriate tools and paints you'll need to create wonderful designs.

The Mad Stencillist (http://www.madstencilist.com/) is another fun website with plenty of photos of wall murals created by stencils that look like they'd be a joy to have in any room.

So don't think of stenciling as some simple art fit only for friezes or borders. There's a vast world of creativity out there for you to experiment with.