Years ago (way back in the 1990′s) when every stencil designer was coming out with endless “ivy” designs, someone actually named one of their stencils “Yet Another Ivy”. Ivy has had it design day for awhile, but I don’t think that there can ever be too many Damask patterns in the world! There is such a heightened interest in Rococco and Baroque suddenly. Good example: Brocade Home!

Here is one that I did for the upcoming Modern Masters collection. Still loving the Faded Fabric look shown right but I wanted to show the designs interpreted in different (and less time consuming to produce) ways. I really like the Lace Valance version on the left and think it makes a nice deep frieze option for a bedroom with slightly higher ceilings. The background is sponge-rolled metallic paints and I stencil-embossed the “lace” over it with Shimmerstone.

After releasing a few hundred different stencil designs, coming up with an original name can be a bit of a chore! I often turn to the internet and just start googling to come up with names of cities and places of architectural interest. The plus there is that it gives me a chance to educate myself a little more about the world of art and the world in general.

  

The Alhambra design is named after an ancient palace/fortress complex that was built in what is now Southern Spain to house Moorish monarchs and Muslim kings. It is now a museum that features exquisite Islamic architecture and decorative art. This photo comes from greatbuildings.com and the Alhambra is now added to my wish list of sites to see!

Here are a couple of designs (Alhambra and Kashmir Border) from the forthcoming MM Global Stencil Collection, aka Royal Stencil Exclusives, that were worked into one of the step-by-step finishes. The finishes are a series of “Recipe Cards” called Master Finish Formulas. This one, a decorative dado concept, uses a new product that will be available soon called Texture Effects-a stone-like plaster/texture. It has a nice high build that makes it great for stencil embossing and it’s self-sealing properties mean that you can glaze or paint over it with great results. Here, it was rubbed back while still to create highlights on the raised areas of the texture.

Believe it or not, this was glazed with Venetian Blue metallic paint. The texture absorbs the mica in the paint, eliminating the metallic glow and leaving just this perfect Moroccan blue color. If you or your client couldn’t handle that much blue, it would also be really pretty to flip to the Tequila Gold color for the top portion of the wall.