Well, thanks Christine for asking! Sometimes painting lines can be tricky on walls, especially on a heavily textured wall, but it doesn’t have to be. You will have to forgive the terrible pictures, but hopefully you will get the idea.

Here is the step-by-step process for painting your own panels.

1. Choose how large you want your border to be around your panels. I chose 4 inches, and my sister chose 5. I took the smallest wall that I had in the room, and made the border as large as possible without making the panel look funny in the room. This might be above the door for you – and maybe only 3 inch borders work depending on your wall height.

2. LIGHTLY draw pencil lines using a ruler and level to create even borders for each wall. (For added interest, you could break a large wall up with three panels, and center the bed in the largest panel.)

3. Place your blue painters tape just NEXT to the pencil line. If you tape over the pencil line, after painting, you’ll pull your tape up to reveal your pencil line intact and you don’t want that. If you tape outside of the pencil line just a tiny bit, you will ensure that the paint covers the pencil line and there will be no erasing needed.

4. Burnish the Tape. To make sure that the tape adheres to all parts of the walls, even in the nooks and crannies created by wall texture, take a large eraser and burnish (press real hard to make sure the tape is sticking to the wall) the edge of the tape that will be touching the new paint. Burnishing will create a tight seal between the wall and tape, and help ensure that less paint seeps underneath.

5. Seal the Tape. This step is a helpful one, although in the interest of time, I did not follow this step and still came out okay. After burnishing the tape, you can use glaze or varnish to seal the tape. Take a small artist brush and lightly paint along the edge of the tape that is getting painted over. These clear mediums will seep under any gaps left between the tape and the wall. This way if any paint is going to get under your carefully placed tape, it is clear paint, and won’t be seen. This is will give you a nice crisp edge for your borders.

6. Roll the paint! Start in the center, and as you get less paint on your roller, carefully go over the tape. The less paint that is on the roller for these edges help to make sure paint doesn’t go where it shouldn’t.

7. Remove up the tape and touchup. Take a small artist brush and touchup any little paint that managed to sneak under your tape.

It sounds like a lot of work, but these are a lot of quick steps, and it will make a GREAT impact in your room. Please comment if you have questions and I can help you through it!