DIY Spray Painted Christmas Pillows

Can you believe we are a little over a week away from Christmas?  It sure is starting to feel like Christmas around here.  Brrrrrr!!  I have a couple more tutorials I want to share with you before it gets here, so today I will be sharing our DIY Spray Painted Christmas Pillows.  Yes, you read that right!  Spray paint.  🙂One of the easiest, and my favorite way, to change up the decor of a room is to change your pillows.  Or pillow covers in this case.  That is a lot easier on the pocketbook too!  Especially when you are making them yourself like this.   

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use.  If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase.  I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.  Thank you for supporting my blog!

For this project you will need:

• Drop cloth or plain pillow covers
• Red and black spray paint
• Cricut Explore Air or Silhouette Cameo cutter (and the tools it comes with)
• Clear Contact paper – Cut down to 12″ wide 
• Transfer tape or blue painter’s tape (optional)
• Brayer roller or something to press the stencil down
• Cardboard or posterboard to mask off

I made the pillow covers for this project using the same method as my easy zippered pillow cover tutorial but you could just as easily buy plain pillow covers like these from Hobby Lobby.  However, it is a little easier to paint the panel of fabric before it is sewn together into a pillow cover.  These pillows were actually made before I started this blog so my apologies that there aren’t a lot of the pictures of the process.  The houndstooth pillow is another pillow I made.  You can find the tutorial for that here.

We found the image of the Santa online but Mr. Wonderful cleaned it up a bit in Photoshop.  The Reindeer Feed pillow was inspired by one I saw on Decor Steals.  If you are not familiar with this site and like farmhouse style, check it out.  You will love it!  Also if you don’t want to make one, you can buy this one.  🙂

We made the stencils using our Cricut.  Here are the png files for the stencils that can be cut with your Cricut or Silhouette:  

Santa

Reindeer Feed Black

Reindeer Feed Red

The Santa pillow was a little simpler because it is only one color.  The Reindeer Feed pillow was done in two parts because of the two colors.  We use contact paper for our stencils because it is a lot cheaper than using vinyl, especially when we will be throwing it away afterwards.  The pillow covers I made are 20×20”, however our cutting mats are only 12×24”.  Because of this, we had to cut one side of the stencil out and the other side separately.  We overlapped these when putting them on the fabric.

After the cutting is done on your machine, you will “weed out” the parts that you want to show up in color on the pillow.  Make sure to save all the little pieces to the insides of letters that will have to be part of the stencil.  Trust me, those are easy to miss when you are weeding.  You can apply transfer tape to your stencil to help with keeping all those little parts in place when you are taking it off of the cutting mat and moving it to your project.  However, there were not that many in these stencils so we did not use it.

Place the stencil on your pillow cover, making sure it is straight and where you want it to be.  Sometimes it is easier to have a helper on this part, depending on how big your project is.  After it is aligned how you want it to be, press the stencil down and use the brayer over the whole stencil to make sure it is firmly “stuck” to the pillow cover.  You don’t want paint bleeding under your stencil.  Although if it happens a little, that is okay.  As you can see, it happened a little in our Reindeer Feed pillow.  I actually think it fits in with the look of the pillow anyway.  🙂

You will have to mask off any area that you do not want to be painted using the cardboard or posterboard.  This includes all areas that are outside of the stencil.  Make sure you shake the spray paint can thoroughly before spraying.  Hold the can about 10-12 inches above the pillow cover.  Spray an even stream across the whole area until it is completely covered.  Apply 2-3 light to medium coats or to your liking waiting a couple minutes in between each coat.  After it is fully covered, take the stencil off immediately, don’t wait for it to dry first.  

With the Reindeer Feed pillow, we first painted the black color. After it is dry, you can use the reindeer as a guide for placing the second stencil down to paint the red color.  After using it as a guide, remove the reindeer piece to paint it red.  Again you will mask off all places you don’t want painted.

It is a pretty easy process, I feel like it is easier than painting a stencil by hand with a stencil brush.  Plus, the pillow covers are washable and the paint will not wash out.  It may look a bit faded after washing but I feel that adds to the vintage look.  

Have a wonderful weekend!  It is a great weekend to stay inside and work on a project like this.  🙂

Kimberly