Bone Inlay Stencil on IKEA RAST Drawers with Fusion Mineral Paint

From my Timeless Home Collaboration with Essential Stencil

If you’re in the USA, you may be following me after seeing some of my live videos with Essential Stencil on their Facebook page each week as one of their ambassadors.

I was excited for the opportunity to collaborate with Essential Stencil on this collection and one of the big projects I worked on while creating this set, was using the Bone Inlay Pattern Stencil on this ordinary IKEA chest of drawers.

A simple Pinterest search of “bone inlay furniture” will show a myriad of beautiful authentic bone inlay or “mother of pearl inlay” furniture pieces. I loved the idea of being able to create a stencil that could mimic this unique look, so was glad to be able to add this stencil along with the Border Stencils set, which will allow for so many possibilites to create this look.

IKEA RAST Pine Drawers

I actually found this set of IKEA RAST pine drawers on Facebook marketplace. The owner had hardly used them, and had not even stained or varnished them, so they were raw pine and good to go as far as painting them.

I thought these would make a perfect feature piece to try out the Bone Inlay Pattern Stencil that is a part of my Timeless Home Collaboration collection with Essential Stencil.

*Timeless Home Collection – use code IRESTORESTUFF & receive a further 10% off the bundle or any other offer at Essential Stencil.

Starting with a solid base background

When thinking about a bone inlay look for furniture, I imagined a white stencil over a darker background.

But really, the sky is the limit with colour combination ideas. I’ve seen some real bone inlay within pieces that are light and neutral tones that look gorgeous.

For this example, I chose Fusion’s Homestead Blue, a dark sea blue that has been a classic colour for Fusion’s parent company, Homestead House Paint Co. for years. This one is timeless.

I neglected to take pics of the piece painted before I began stenciling, but this really only took 2 coats in a couple of hours including dry time in our climate here in Queensland, Australia.

Bone Inlay Pattern Stencil

For more indepth tutorials on Stenciling, I have over 250 videos in my Essential Stencil Tutorials Playlist.

But in short, my key tips for stenciling are:

use a dry brush – meaning, after dipping just the tips of your stencil brush into your paint, use a piece of cardboard or a paper plate to offload your brush as much as you can until almost dry.
using your “dry” brush, then using a swirling motion, gently press your brush on the stencil and circle round and round filling in the stencil details.
if your stenciling results in “bleeding” under the stencil or “fuzzy edges”, then you have too much on your brush.
Practice on a piece of cardboard until you learn the right amount to have on your brush. LESS is best. You can always add an additional layer if you want a fuller coverage.

I used Fusion’s Casement for the white stenciling.

IKEA RAST drawers with stencils on most sides

Progress – one side to go

You’ll notice the bone inlay stencil is actually a little different to the patterning on the front of the drawers.

I love to make my stencils do things beyond their limitations – haha. The stencil itself is 15″ wide, and my drawers are 23″. but the height of both the stencil and the drawer are 7″. So I just needed to “stretch” my stencil out to grow wider.

To do that I used painters tape to tape off areas I didn’t want to stencil just yet, then after stenciling the untaped areas, I moved the stencil across, removed my tape and repeated the process.

This is probably better explained visually, so included in this blog post below, you’ll see a video of the live I did on my launch day this week with Essential Stencil, explaining and demonstrating how to manipulate your stencils and create all kinds of fun on your projects.