Louvered shutters
rarely have space for painted accents.
When the subject of exterior home beautification is raised, shutters are frequently mentioned. These window enhancers add a great deal of charm to Tudor cottages, as well as low-slung ranch homes. Creative homeowners regularly add design elements to their shutters as a way of personalizing their homes. If your favorite graphics are more celestial than down-to-earth, a fanciful mix of hearts and angels will give your home a signature touch.
Instructions
1. Measure your windows to determine the size of the vinyl shutters you'll need for your angel and heart design. Match those measurements to the closest standard shutter size. Decide whether raised-panel or board-and-batten shutters are best for your embellishments. Louvered shutters aren't appropriate; rarely are the border frames wide enough to embellish.
2. Search for heart and angel reference material, patterns or templates. Boot your computer. Scan the art. Save the images on your desktop as jpegs. Open a new document in any software program that allows you to import images. Size the documents properly so you're working to scale. For example, if your shutters are 6 feet high and 3 feet wide, work within a 6-inch by 3-inch field so your design maintains the correct scaling.
3. Choose the color you'll paint your shutters from your computer's paint picker. Try a few before you decide on the best one. Import the heart and angel jpegs to the shutter document. Adjust the size of the images. Experiment with different arrangements. You could have a line of five hearts interspersed by three angels, or you could make one element bigger than the others -- a giant heart with small angels on either side, for example. Another option is superimposing one angel over each of five hearts. Worlds of combinations await. Try a variety.
4. Print the finished layout to see how your design looks on paper. Make adjustments if the arrangement looks peculiar or lacks harmony and balance. Output a final color copy of your design and take it to the paint store. Match your colors to color chips. Have your vinyl-specific paint mixed. Add small cans of accent colors to your shopping cart for the angels and hearts.
5. Prep and paint the shutters in the background color you've chose. Apply more than one coat of paint with a drying period between the applications if you're not satisfied with the intensity of the color after the initial coat dries.
6. Create new, resized heart and angel templates: If the shapes on the shutters are larger or smaller than the original patterns you scanned, enlarge or shrink them on a photocopier to adjust the dimensions. Cut new stencils of sturdy plastic sheeting from the photocopies. Tape stencils to the shutters. Fill the heart and angel shapes with accent colors and a stippling brush.
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