I am excited to share today’s post with you guys!  There has been A LOT of renovation going on at my house recently, which hasn’t left too much time for anything crafty.  Well that’s all going to change today.  Yay!

Do you remember my wall art project or my birch tree stenciled wall?  The stencil I used for both was from Cutting Edge Stencils and can be purchased here.  The birds flying across my dining room are courtesy of the free stencil they sent when I ordered the wall stencil.  

The cool peeps at Cutting Edge Stencils even featured my wall art project on their blog once.  I know it’s like I’m a celebrity or something!  Ok, not exactly.  But it was awesome when they asked me if I’d like to try out their new Paint-A-Pillow stencil kit. Um… yea!  The hardest part was picking out which stencil I wanted to use.  Here are some of my favorites …You can search for your favorite HERE.  It took me forever, but with creativity in mind, I went with the school of fish design.  I figured it was beachy without being over the top beachy.  The basic paint kit comes with one paint color and a choice of either white or natural fabric colors.  I chose turquoise paint, of course.  And I ordered one white and one natural pillow covers so I could make two pillows.  The kit also comes with a super comfy pillow insert, a high quality 1/2″ stencil brush, paint roller and tray — so really everything you need to make a pillow.  I ordered 3 extra colors and a few extra brushes because I’m special.

My kit arrived in 3 days.  It looked like a pizza box!  But was filled with goodies.  I was surprised (and happy) to find the pillow cover had the perfect size piece of cardboard already inside it, and was mounted to the stencil frame, with the stencil secured in place on top.  It was ready to go!  I used all four paint colors on my first pillow, starting with turquoise.  I used the biggest stencil brush first.I made my way through the colors, using progressively smaller stencil brushes until it looked like this.I let it dry only a few minutes, then removed the stencil.  It seemed completely dry about 10 minutes later, so I flipped both the pillow and the stencil over and reattached to the frame.  I didn’t wash the stencil in between.  But I did make sure I used the same colors – in the same spots  – I had before.  It worked perfectly and went a lot quicker than the first side.For pillow #2 I washed the stencil and set it up again on the natural colored pillow cover. This time I wanted all the fish the same color, except for one fish I was going to paint swimming in the opposite direction.  You can see I taped off one of the fish.  This time I used the roller.  But I did find I also had to use the stencil brush, so I’m not sure it was all that much faster. I washed the stencil and flipped it over to do one yellow fish swimming against the crowd. Then I did the same thing on the other side. Except this time I didn’t tape anything off because I figured there was already room to add the yellow fish.

Washing the stencil is really easy — I leaned it on the back of a cookie sheet and rinsed it off in the kitchen sink.  A little rubbing with a rag and the paint came right off.  I remember my Cutting Edge Stencil being easy to clean as well.  

After they dried completely I ironed all four sides.  The directions said that ironing would help set the paint and was recommended if you plan on washing the covers.  I will definitely be washing mine!  With 3 kids they will inevitably get dirty.  Smart Jr took a picture of me ironing, but I have like a quadruple chin in it, so you won’t be seeing it.  Moving on.  I stuffed the provided pillow fillers inside the cases and was VERY happy with how comfortable they are.  It says the inserts can be used both indoors and out — awesome!

And then we had a photo shoot …

I think the white cover looks better on the white couch and the natural cover looks better on the darker couch.  They look kinda weird together, but it does give you a good sense of the difference between the two.

Thank you to Cutting Edge Stencils / Paint-A-Pillow for letting me try out their newest product!  It was a lot of fun and I love the results.  I am looking forward to another stencil project soon.  I’d love to do another all over wall stencil behind my bed.  I think hubby already has his eye on the Sea Waves.  Go figure!