What not to stair

Every stair now has its final coat of gritty gunk on it, time to start the stenciling! I decided to go with a theme my friend James suggested. I had a chair in my old apartment that had flames running up the legs and clouds on the top, and was the seat between heaven and hell. Seemed like a fun, interesting idea for something different on the stairs. I got some stencils free-with-purchase that are meant for airbrushing makeup, so I decided to use those, since the flame stencil I used in the bedroom is huge.

 

It turns out they're a little smaller than I thought. 

 

I decided to start with a coat of blue, because I want a kinda layery-depth effect, so I used some I had left from the bedroom. 

 

 The stencil is so small, it takes forever to do the base of the stair. I decided to let it dry for a while then come back and layer in some other colours. Here's a closeup of how it looks, which is suspiciously similar to the bedroom floor.

 

I came back a few hours later to add in some orange and yellow. In retrospect, this is where things went south. You can see I was spacing out the stencil so that I wouldnt smudge wet paint. This was a terrible idea, it created lines and corners that just look awful. 

 

"Ok maybe i can fill some of them in with overlaps and red paint."

 

"this isnt working! more paint!"

 

 

"Maybe just stenciling in red over the top will bring it together."

 

 

"...maybe from far away...?"

 

Yeah, no. I just wound up with a hot mess of hot-rod flame puke all over the bottom stair. Fortunately its black, so I can just paint over it with more black without it being too big of a loss. I'll look at it tomorrow when its dried and decide for sure, but at this point I think I will just stick with the ombre effect. Turns out, different is not what I'm looking for.