Joansy, have you ever used a potato as a stencil?

Joansy, have fun with your redecorating! I too, started in the back of my house where EVERYONE wouldn't see my mistakes! In our master bath my friend Debbie & I took 2 pieces of kraft paper, each as long as our front porch(42 ft)& painted them, sponging on several different shades of leftover paint(penny-savers that we are!)Then we tore it into huge pieces & pasted them to three walls in the bathroom, overlapping & leaving the torn, ragged edges of brown paper showing through.(We sealed it with clear sealer when we were finished)It's really neat looking, with a textured appearance.(At one point tho, a friend stopped by, asking..."so what you're doing is MAKING wallpaper & then TEARING it up?". That same day we were trying to figure out how to incorporate a Tuscany feel to the master bedroom. We have a wrought iron bed with grape & grape vine motifs in the iron. Debbie got a potato out of the potato bin, cut it in half & hand carved a bunch of grapes into one of the cut sides!(Talk about decorating on the cheap!)We dipped it in paint and "stamped" grape clusters around one corner of the doorway leading to the bathroom, around one corner of the window & one corner of the bedroom door. We added vines and leaves free-hand. It's not overdone, but really adds something to the room.
Then I got brave. A wall EVERYONE sees! My husband & I had just added a cook's library & new bath to the back of our homee. We needed the room to hold all my cookbooks.(I'm not kidding!) I had been looking for a quote to stencil over the door to that room, it's such a wonderfully cozy room with satillo tile, large windows, lots of bookcases, a roomy chair and 1/2 for perusing my books and usually a cat or two. When I stumbled upon Longfellow's, "the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books;", I knew I had located the right one. We "antiqued" that section of the wall by lightly dragging it with burnt siena paint, making it appear kinda dirty and old.I used my computer to print out the font I wanted & enlarged it, traced it onto kraft paper & used transfer paper(along with a crafty neighbor)to get it traced onto the wall.(The wall has a rough texture to it so this was a bit tricky) She filled in the letters with burnt siena paint, and it is utterly gorgeous. (If I do say so myself!)
My husband never knows what new project he will return to from work, in December I beat the heck out of our wooden homemade kitchen cabinets, and washed them with scone,light green and brown paints, scrubbing the brown deep into the "worm holes", rasp marks and other "wounds" from my use of several of my husband's blacksmithing tools. Then I dragged the kitchen walls with burnt siena paint! It resulted in a Tuscany, old-wall type look. My Father was the only one to look at it and ask, "a BROWN kitchen?"
Please post your decorating progress and more of your yummy sounding recipes!