How to Fix Paint Bleed Under a Stencil

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How many times have you ruined a project because the paint bled under the stencil?  I will show you how to fix paint bleed under a stencil. This happened to me just the other day.  I was making a wood sign to celebrate my favorite time of the year, Pumpkin Spice Season!  My project appeared to be turning out great until I pulled the stencil off to reveal this:

 

 

Best Way to Fix Paint Bleed

Whenever I’m painting, whether it’s a room or a small craft project, I always have baby wipes handy.  Baby wipes are great for cleaning acrylic paint off of other painted surfaces.  For this project, the wipes were not effective, as the wood was not coated with paint and it was very porous.  You can see to the right of the pumpkin where I tried to clean up with a wipe.  When you can’t clean up the paint, it’s time to camouflage the screwup.

Second Best Way Distress It

If you can’t erase the mistake with a wipe, cover it up with some distressing.  I grabbed a tube of Burnt Umber Americana acrylic paint and mixed in some of the Light Buttermilk Americana paint I had used for the letters on my sign.

The blend of these two colors made a great match for the wood.  I used a small paint brush to touch up around the capital P, the k, and under season.

 

I felt those touch-ups were too obvious, so I decided to add some distressing in various spots to make the touch ups stand out less.  I used a crumpled paper towel to apply very small amounts of the mixed paint.

Eventually, I arrived at a finish I could live with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ironically, after all that, I decided the words really needed to be bigger, and I started all over.