Earlier this week, we blogged lace furniture . Catching up on our Tivoed episodes of Bravo's While You Were Out, we sparked to an idea introduced to us by the designer Nadia Geller (who also hosts Bravo's Home Made Simple) of using lace as a stencil...
We'd try a lacy line around the ceiling, or at chair rail height, as a stand-in for molding on our flat walls. We can imagine a black lace border in an otherwise spare and modern bedroom. We'd use lace tape for the down and dirty way to creat a similar effect. Although we've blogged this tape's use to dress up our otherwise plain holiday packages, thanks go to reader halfpint for reminding us of its existence.
–Abby
Alexis' Modern Glass House 
Before & After: A Bathroom Goes From Pinky Peach to Sleek and Chic
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Tom Black Espadrille
20 Scrumptious Brunch Recipes 
Magic One-Ingredient Ice Cream 5 Ways: Peanut Butter, Nutella, and More
Comments (10)
Debbie Travis did that once on a dresser and it looked fantastic.
Using lace as a stencil sounds messy.
Except that lace tape is not cut out.
I don't know man, lace is kinda gross. But then again, I've lived with a boy so long that I've lost my ability to respond to anything girly.
The February 2007 issue of Martha Stewart has some great ideas for using lace, some of which include some nifty stenciling.
"I've lost my ability to respond to anything girly" but your screenname is "kitties!" Ha!
Is there a link to a use of lace as a stencil, perchance? It's an interesting idea, and I'm getting confused trying to envision whether the lace is really used as a stencil, which would give you a negative image of the lace, versus as something you trace around and then paint within the lines, versus as an inspiration to draw a stencil. (That's not a quibble over semantics, but an effort to figure out the ideal technique!)
Transparent stickers with lacy designs are a huge help in designing miniatures, so I'm not utterly shocked that it'd be tried in full-size.
I've used lace as a stencil- on a old series of collages where I created "placemats" back in the early 90's....using Spray Paint with the lace as a stencil on the "second surface" of ribbed Warp-O-Mat shelf lining material.....
Thats all the secrets I'm giving out today....
I'm also interested in creating a positive stencil--not from lace, but from the festive papel picados used as banners in Mexico. Haven't figured it out, yet..
I'm considering buying the Kanarp sea grass rug from Ikea, spray painting it black and then using lace to stencil in white. My question is should I spray paint white first and then lay the lace down and spray the black over? Or is the white meant to go in the open spots around the lace? I may have to fiddle with this on newspaper before I do it for reals.