Hand Painted Roller Blinds – Take One (And how to get clean crisp lines with masking tape without getting the paint bleed under the edges)

Can you imagine, these are the basic white roller blinds, which I painted for my daughter’s room in our previous house. My daughter found this bicycle stencil and wanted that design on the blinds. Of course I tried stenciling the blinds before abandoning that idea. To get the stencil in perfect line, I first taped the whole blind surface with masking tape in straight lines.

Because the blind fabric was heavy duty canvas, the weave was quite obvious and the paint seeped through the stencil. Good that I started from the top, because it did not turned out the way we had envisioned, and the blind was long enough to leave the top part out of sight, when the it was open to cover the window.

Then I re-taped the blind in a geometric pattern.

The tape was not sticking properly and leaving the surface in some spots.

First I pressed all the tape firmly with a brayer roller.

Now the secret to get the perfectly crisp lines; I applied a coat of white paint to seal the edges of the masking tape. I used white paint, because the base was white in color. It is always a good idea to first seal the masking tape edges with the base coat. But if you don’t have that color, then seal the tape with clear medium, like Modpodge.

Next step was to simply paint between the lines. I used champagne gold and black for that. It is the same gold color I used at my daughter’s geometric painted closed doors, her mirror, and her dresser.