Kerry's Stencilled Patio - Take Two!

The story so far...

Our Indian stone patio had just been laid when we moved into our home in 2007 and the colours were beautiful. 13 yrs of power washing twice a year, it was a little jaded and needed some love and attention.
After joining the Dizzy Duck family in April 2020 I was dying to stencil something! 

The Zarzis was my favourite stencil design from the off.  It was always going to be that one for me ❤️ The hard part was choosing colours and as you can see, I went blue and bold.  We needed sunglasses for a good few weeks!  

That Summer I sat out loadfs admiring my handy work, I loved it!  I’d done that, my first ever creative project!  👏

Now as much as I loved my patio what I really wanted was a sun room, conservatory, orangerie...whatever you call it 🤷‍♀️

Two months after stencilling the ground work began, right where the patio was! Out came the stencilled Indian stone and up went the sun room extension. 
The Zarzis slabs were re-laid where our grass had been and stayed there for another 2 years until I decided a change was needed.  I was no longer in love with the Zarzis, I had a new favourite (we women are allowed to change our minds as often as we like aren’t we?!) 😂
My new love…the Verona!

Prep…

A good power washing was all that was needed to clean the patio.  
I hadn’t sealed the patio slabs but there were only a few patches that had lifted and this was more to do with us scraping furniture across it that anything else.
The husband did the power washing, you’ve got to let your other half feel like they’ve contributed a little.  It’s definitely my creation though which I tell him, most emphatically!

I was going for something more subtle, classy and monochrome this time so bought lots of tester pots and chose Plymouth Grey Sandtex Microseal Smooth Masonry paint for the base. There are so many brands of masonry paint to choose from but I have used Valspar and Sandtex and have been happy with both of them. 
I chose the Black Sandtex Microseal Smooth Masonry paint for the stencilling. I bought two pots of the tester size and ended up having to buy four more.  In the end it would have been cheaper to buy a 5 litre tin. Lesson learned!

I thought it would take a good 3 or 4 coats to cover that blue so I was very pleased after the second coat to find it had covered really well 👍
I used a masonry paint roller for the base coat as my flags aren’t at all level so they need that extra depth of roller to get the paint into all the right places. For the stencilling I used a small foam roller. These are just my preferences, I’m used to decorating in the house with a roller so I just find it works better for me than a stencil brush.

I started off testing first on a piece of cardboard.  Always better to practice a bit even when you’ve done it before to get the feel of how much paint you need and how to go around the pattern in your design making sure you don’t miss any cut out bits.

Then I moved onto the real thing…😃

This is where I’d like to add a warning!  Now I know we don’t live in the sunniest of countries and here in Lancashire we get our fair share of rain.  But by the end of day one and not having applied any sun cream I now had a lovely vest tan which I’m sure will stay with me until next year!  So, please use sun cream when stencilling your patios under the hot British sun! 🌞😎

Other than sun cream you’ll need:

• Dizzy Duck stencils (cut to size if needed - we do custom sizes)
• A cushion (to save your knees!)
• Wipes to remove excess paint off your stencil
• A helper (Mother!) Mum came in useful to hold and bend the stencil into tricky edges whilst I rolled the paint on.
• Something to hold your stencil down at the corners so it doesn’t blow away (I chose four big stones from our garden)
• Appointment with a manicurist for when you’ve finished! 💅

I intended on 2 coats of stencilling to get a solid definition, but got to the end of the first coat and realised that I liked the effect of one layer. 
It had a kind of rustic charm plus my knees were killing and there we have the end result!  My lovely new Verona patio! Once again,
I am very proud of my creation and will be sitting out there as much as possible, whenever the Great British weather allows of course! 🙄