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1) Ensure your chest of drawers is clean and dust-free by wiping down with a damp cloth. Remove the handles from one side of the drawers.
2) Patterned paint rollers will differ slightly depending on the manufacturer but generally they consist of a rubber roller with a raised pattern, a foam roller that feeds paint to the patterned roller, a handle and a clip-on frame that holds the elements together.
3) Use Blu-Tack to fix a sheet of lining paper to a wall. To practise using the patterned paint roller, pour a little paint into a paint tray and roll the foam roller into the paint. Clip on the patterned roller and using a firm, even pressure, roll the roller from the top to the bottom of the lining paper. Continue practising in this way until you are happy with the results.
4) Using the photograph as a guide to where the design will sit on your own piece of furniture, use masking tape to cover any areas that you would prefer not to be stencilled, or any parts of the cupboard that will protrude into the path of the roller (we masked off the overhanging edge of the cupboard top above the top drawer and the bottom section of the frame underneath the lowest drawer - see main illustration).
5) Push in the drawers so they lie flush against the front face of the cupboard. Using the handle holes as a guide for placing the centre of the roller and starting from the top of the top drawer, roll down over the three drawers and the front face of the cupboard between the drawers (see illustration below), stopping at the bottom edge of the lowest drawer. Lift the roller cleanly off the surface.
6) Aligning the roller with the stencilled design on the front, continue rolling from the front of the cupboard top to the back. Again, lift the roller cleanly off the surface to finish.
7) Leave the paint to dry completely before replacing the handles.
Next: More ways to add pattern to furniture>>
Illustration by Michael A Hill
