I used stencil but made a few mistakes. Number one, the stencils do not auto space, you have to align each one both vertically and horizontally one at a time, ignoring the outside edges. It was very difficult to get the right spacing. Two, the supplied paint and brush was hard to use and get a clean edge. I ended up using a wide sharpie marker.
If there is a next time, I would print out the numbers, cut them to make a stencil and use a black wide sharpie. Allow 48 hrs for the ink to dry before getting wet.