The Heart Wall Tutorial- How To Get Crisp Stencils On Textured Walls

I’ve been itching to get the kids rooms done since the day we moved in. The way my brain works, it’s like the reverse of if you If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.

I want their rooms to be orderly, which means we need to organize closets and drawers, but there’s no point in organizing if we’re just going to destroy it when we finally paint, so let’s just do that first.

And plus, it’s nice to see something complete around here. (Except not complete because she still needs a headboard and we now need to organize and such.)

ANYWAY, the point is, we painted Leyna’s room this weekend. And of course by “we” I mean Scott did.

I picked out the colors and the stencil, though!

Which is why he hated me for about 48 hours.

But it was totally worth it (says the girl who didn’t paint it)!

So if you would also like to achieve this look and push your sanity to the brink of a meltdown, read on.

Oh, and here are the supplies and paint colors we used:

Royal Design Studio large Modern Stencil Polka Heart stencil

Ultra dense foam roller

Clear caulk (and caulk gun)

Painters tape

Blow dryer

Paint- 
Ralph Lauren Golden Buttermilk (metallic gold, Home Depot)
Martha Stewart Plum Wine color matched to Behr paint (dark purple, Home Depot)
Martha Stewart Phlox color matched to Behr paint (light purple on surrounding walls, Home Depot)

Step 1. Understand that you are absolutely nuts. You’re just plain crazy. This is a ton of work. Embrace it or don’t do it.

Step 2. Tape your stencil to the wall. (The stencil is smaller here than it originally came because we cut it down when we came to the end to fit the edges.) We started at the bottom, but if we did it again, we’d start at the top. Not that we’re ever doing this again.

Step 3. Outline the hearts in caulk. Each and every one.

Step 4. Rub the caulk into the edges, making sure the entire edge of each heart is covered.

Step 5. Paint your hearts by rolling your foam roller over them. The good news is you can go a little heavier with the paint than you would be able to without the caulk, but still, don’t load your roller up too much! We had to do 3 coats. And in between coats…

Step 6. We used the blow dryer to speed drying time up between the 3 coats. Yup, each and every heart got a little blast of air. Twice.

Step 7. Continue all the above steps until your entire wall is covered.

The stencil is going to get caked up. You’ll have to be sure you’re at least wiping the back so the caulk doesn’t build up and cause the stencil to not sit flush against the wall. We did clean our stencil and peeled the paint off halfway through.

The caulk is the reason we were able to get crisp-looking hearts. Our walls are very textured, and without the caulk, it was like… not going to happen. Nope.

When you peel the stencil away from the wall, you’ll see the white caulk around the edges of the hearts, but don’t worry! If you got the CLEAR kind, it will dry clear.

Now, being the perfectionist that Scott is, he still went back and touched up some spots and edges of some hearts, but that was minimal.

Step 8. Forgive your wife for coming up with this INSANE idea when you see the joy on your little girl’s face who happens to LOVE all things purple, and hearts, and polkadots.

It’s been drawn to my attention a few times that wallpaper or vinyl decals could also achieve this look for possibly less work, and those are great options for some people/rooms!

Unfortunately, we’ve had terrible luck with vinyl decals on our textured walls in the past. They peel very easily, and an entire wall of them would end up costing much more than a stencil and a can of paint (and be super tempting for little fingers to pick at).

That said, if the vinyl decals are something you’re looking for, I found this company on Instagram that sells them.

Wallpaper is just… not really our thing.

I didn’t realize what a kick ass photo backdrop this would be until I took these pictures. Looking forward to many more bed-jumping photo shoots!