Media Cabinet Makeover with Royal Design Studio Stencils

Are there any IKEA lovers out there?  We have purchased quite a bit of IKEA furniture over the years.  However, most of the furniture that we have purchased has been the natural wood/honey brown color and my style has changed quite a bit since these purchases.  The honey brown color is just not in my design plan anymore. These days I am drawn more to white furniture. So I am stuck with {almost} perfectly good furniture in the totally wrong color.  In my never ending quest to create the "perfect" home I decided that my tired old IKEA media cabinet needed a makeover. But this time I wanted to give it a little oomph and decided to try my hand at stenciling.

Royal Design Studio was nice enough to provide me with stenciling supplies to use for this project.  I chose the Small Hollywood Squares stencil, the Aged Nickel Stencil Creme and the 2" stencil brush.

First things first...painting.  Since it was very cold out the day that I decided to start the project, I decided to paint this thing in the bathroom so as not to flood the whole house with fumes.  This bathroom was not as big as I once thought.  

Luckily the next few days that were unseasonably warm so after two coats of white paint, I  moved shop outside.  

Since this is a media cabinet, we store a lot of media "stuff" inside it.  Only problem is the doors are glass and I just hate seeing all those cords and dvd cases so I frosted the glass doors to hide the mess inside.  I used spray paint and gave the glass two coats.

Now for the fun part...the stenciling!  I had never stenciled a piece of furniture before and I was amazed at how easy this was. I measured the top of the cabinet to find the exact middle.  I lined it up with the center of the middle square on the stencil and taped it down with painters tape.

Dip your stencil brush into the cream and swirl the brush onto a paper towel to remove the excess.  Starting at the outer edge of the stencil, swirl in toward the center of the stencil.  The excess paint comes of on the stencil and not on the portion of furniture you are painting.  If you would like a more detailed version of the stenciling process, Royal Design Studio has a Brush Stenciling with Royal Stencil Cremes tutorial.

And that is how simple it is!  Just keep moving the stencil until you're done.  I was worried that I wouldn't be able to line things up and the pattern would get all wonky but the stencil has indicator marks on it that show you exactly where to place it when you move it.  

I am so impressed with the way this turned out.  I am absolutely in love.  I was going to continue the stencil all the way to the edge but loved the way the white border looked so I left it like this.

Royal Design Studio products are very easy to use and I will definitely use them again on future projects.

I would love for you to share your stenciling projects with me!

Royal Design Studio provided me with the stencil, cream and brush  for review.  All opinions are 100% mine.