Paint a Border Without a Stencil

We have a huge wall in our living room that needed some love. Doesn’t it scream, please paint a border without a stencil? 😉

First we painted it Benjamin Moore Kendall Charcoal.

We decided to put the industrial open pipe shelves from Fixer Upper on either side of the TV, but it needed something else across the top, and I wasn’t in the mood to do crown molding.

I knew a border was my best option and I really liked the moroccan design in our master in Colorado, so I searched “borders” on Pinterest and found this great quilt pattern. I always told my design students to look for ideas everywhere…and I must say, I would have never thought of looking at quilt patterns for wall border design ideas, but thank goodness for Pinterest!

There was no pattern, so I looked for square items at home that were the right size that I could trace.

I couldn’t find anything oval-shaped so I free handed that one. You can see it took me a few tries to get the right size.

Then I put it 0n the wall to see if the size would look right.

And then put up the painter’s tape as my bottom guide, and I measured from the floor up to make sure it was leveled, just in case the ceiling wasn’t even. 

Next I traced it with a pencil.

Then for the paint, I used a brush that was the exact size I wanted (a good quality brush from Michaels) and the same color as the overall house wall color, Frazee Siberia.

I took off the tape to do my second coat. The lines aren’t perfect, but it’s so far away that you can’t tell.

My hubby thought I was crazy to paint the border. “Aren’t the shelves enough?” he said. But then later he admitted the border was the perfect finishing touch.

My next post will cover those Fixer Upper-inspired industrial open pipe shelves. 🙂