My wife Anita bought this desk at a local auction house a few weeks ago. The overall condition of the desk was really good, it just had a tear on the veneered top. She sanded and filled the missing area with wood putty hoping that when she applied a dark stain, it would blend in with the rest of the top. My dog Bentley photo bombed the shot.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the repaired area stuck out like a sore thumb. Determined not wanting to paint the entire top and lose the look she was going after, she opted to add a stencil in the area where the blemish was.

She chose a large French postage stamp stencil and angled it across the top. Since the patched area was a little bit on the right side of the desk top, she couldn’t simply center the stencil on the top and completely hide the blemish.

She used a few colors of paint and painted the stencil completely hiding the patch. The stencil now adds quite a bit of character to the desk.

This is how the desk turned out after it was painted and she added a few coats of hemp oil to the top. She has received a lot of postive feedback on her facebook account. You can check out her page here; https://www.facebook.com/bellachicdecor

Can you find the blemish? I sure can’t.