stenciled rain barrel tutorial

i've been itching to have a rain barrel collection system in place for a few years. since heath & emily moved this past month, they got rid of one of the extra barrels they had sitting around. heath's dad works for a refinery, so i guess he comes by these barrels frequently. i'm not sure where one would buy something similar or how much it would cost.

my blank blue slate

i knew i wanted some sort of fun design so i spray painted one
third of the barrel green to serve as the base for my stencil.
then we went on vacation, so i didn't touch the barrel for about a week.

i set up our projector to make the stencil.
(stencil design originally from here.)

the "bones" of the stencil are frog tape, which i placed (not perfectly)
where the tree image projected onto the barrel.

i used an exacto knife to carve out the tree
from the projected image.

i was working on another project simultaneously
 (hence the scraper in my hand--which i did NOT use for this project).
i did, however, employ the glasses & mask combo.
i picked a 90 degree day to do this, so that mask was not comfortable,
but i managed to avoid a contact high from the spray paint. 

my first coat of brown. you can barely see the tree pattern under there.

all painted up & drying in the heat.

to prevent the caps from getting painted shut, i slipped rubber gloves over them.
worked like a charm!

pulling off the stencil was an exciting & terrifying moment.
for the most part, the stencil worked. (yah!)
there are a few bands around the barrel, which created bulges
under the stencil, so those areas are a wee bit fuzzy.

brandon ordered a diverter from amazon.
this will allow the water to flow into the barrel until the barrel is full,
at which point it will flow through the remainder of the gutter
(not attached in this picture) & out away from the house. 

here she is in front of our house.
ignore the crispy brown grass--we are slowly bringing that back to life.
hopefully the rain barrel will assist with that.

the only thing missing in this photo is the spigot, which we installed yesterday.
brandon just picked up a basic spigot at home depot,
used the appropriate drill-bit, & caulked the spigot before shoving it in. 

we finished this project up just in time, because last night we had a great rainstorm. we are all grateful for the rain, as it allowed crews to get an edge on the wildfire blazing west of town. perhaps it was an if-you-build-it-they-will-come thing?