Faux Wood Grain Is Easy When You Stencil It

I can't help but to feature our faux wood grain stencils because customer Lynn Beacham turned her plain doors in to fabulous wood grained 6 panel doors with a bit of stain, some imagination and our faux wood grain stencils.

Check it out!

See how it was done Here

How to Paint Your Linoleum Floor and Design with Stencils

The last project with my kitchen re-decorating was to do something about that awful, white linoleum floor! 


I cleaned it to "squeaky", then primed it with Zinsser's Premium Pro Primer.

I decided that I not only wanted a soft faux finish, but that I wanted to create a design on the floor by taping off sections and doing them in different shades of the same paint colors.

I sponge painted cream and medium brown paints over the taped off rectangle in the center of the floor, blending, blending and more blending, with the light color being the most predominate.

I then protected the inner frame with tape and did the same sponging on the rest of the floor, this time using the darker color as the predominate color. Blending really well is what gives the faux finish it's softness.

I wanted a specific looking border for my kitchen. So I sat down in front of an old movie and drew this design as my "theme".

Once I cut the stencil, I used it with brown acrylic paint just inside the inner frame I sponged on the floor.

Yes indeed! That was exactly the look I was after!

4 coats of clear, non-yellowing polyurethane for floors and the paint job was now sealed and ready for traffic!

I'm just thrilled with how the whole kitchen came out. 

Next post, I'll show you how I did the back splash with the same stencil design!

Visit the VictoriaLarsen.com website for beautiful stencil designs you can use to give your kitchen a fresh, updated design.

How to Faux Finish Your Formica Counter Tops to Look Like Granite

The inside of my home was pretty plain when I moved in and I've been dying to do something about it! Now, come on.....I'm a stencil designer... I can't even force myself to have a plain home for too long! Because I took all spring and summer to improve my yard and gardens, it took until now to begin to work on the inside.

I began in my kitchen. This was a room I didn't want to even hang out in! Blah and boring!

I started out with the cabinets,  staining them to a luscious dark coffee color. That change alone changed the feel of the room, giving it a much more elegant feel.

Do you see those plain counter tops? They needed a new color and textural view. I made mine look like real granite with just primer, paint and varnish!

It's easy to do. Click the link to see the detailed, step by step!

How to Paint Formica Counter Tops

There's something about a plain kitchen that just makes you want to stay out of it! And I had no desire to be in mine.

It was just so boring!

But I had a vision in mind.... Deep, richly colored cabinets, granite counter tops, a beautiful floor and stenciling. (What else? I'm a stencil designer! Gotta have stencils!).

The first order of business was to stain those light cabinets. They needed re-finishing anyway. Even though they are only 6 years old, the varnish had begun to come off the doors.

I tried a new product I really like: Minwax Polyshades. The thing I loved about it was that the product not only stains but also seals with polyurethane at the same time! Any time I can save a step, I'm thrilled!

All I had to do was lightly scuff the surface with sand paper. No stripping needed (another thing I loved!).

I didn't even remove the doors to apply this wonderful finish.

This change alone just thrilled me! Ah, but more, much more was yet to come!

Visit the VictoriaLarsen.com website for beautiful stencils and plaster molds, plus tons of decorating ideas and tip to help you make your home a more pleasant place to live

I've always been a person who sees the possibilities, rather than "what is". And this home has tons of possibilities!

I began transforming my new home in the desert of New Mexico by planting, planting, planting! The inside of the house is plain, but that's something I could live with while I created a more pleasant place in which to live.

Over this past spring and summer, I learned a lot about how different gardening in New Mexico is versus other areas of the country.

Here, the soil simply sucks the life right out of every plant you place in the ground. So the learning curve was incredible! But I did succeed!

Starting with basically nothing, I started "painting" the yards with plants and lawn.

And the back yard (where I like to hang out) was even worse!

But even that barren scene became something much more lush with a lot of seed and a privacy wall that I had a blast creating with the branch stencil from our Raised Plaster Aspen Tree Stencil Set.

The summer proved to be very productive and finally, I could relax and start to create a beautiful home on the inside!

Visit the VictoriaLarsen.com website for lots of interior decorating ideas and the products to help make them possible.

Life has changed considerably over the past year. I sold my home in the high mountains of Northern Idaho and moved to the high desert of New Mexico to be closer to my family.

Starting fresh in a new home has given me the opportunity to start over with my decorating and make this new home an extension of "Me" and what I see as beautiful.
Take this journey with me as I transform this desert "diamond in the rough" in to my oasis in the desert.

Creating Ornamental Designs on Furniture is Easy with Molds and Water Putty

I love hand carved furniture and cabinetry. The beautiful patterns that protrude and catch the light. They look so "high end" and the intense beauty just makes me gasp for breath!
But have you ever priced the stuff? Yikes!

Though I do Raised Plaster Stenciling to create ornamental raised designs on furniture and cabinets all the time, I do love the look of much more high profile designs on some items.

Raised plaster stenciling

Besides wanting to create those luscious Hollywood movie set ceilings and walls of ornamental plaster, that's one of the reasons I dove head first in to making molds for plaster.

Photo shows the artwork of Beth Savoie using our plaster molds on a head and foot board for a bed.

Finding just the right product to create a "hard as nails" casting from these molds was sometimes daunting. I wanted it to be easy, to be fast like plaster and to create a rock hard ornamental piece to attach to cabinetry and furniture. Bake-able clay and self hardening clay works fine but I like to try new things.

Alas, Durhams Hard Water Putty was discovered. I'd heard of this product before but never tried it until now. It's fabulous! You can pre-tint the putty with craft paints or dry pigments which is very cool, and you can mix it to different consistencies for different projects.

It comes in powder form in small, medium and large quantities and is readily available at your local hardware store. Now how convenient is that?

So when your next project includes adding ornamental beauty to your kitchen or bath cabinets, re-doing your headboard or adding the look of hand carves ornaments to your Armour, do give Durham's Water Putty a try.

Visit the VictoriaLarsen.com website for hundreds of painting stencils, raised plaster stencils and plaster molds for beautiful interiors.