Apologies if the humour went awry there ;-) It's always an irking thing for my wife.
Anyway. Hand painting and stencil sounds like a good plan because you're guaranteed to get the real deal as opposed to something that emulates it near as damnit. I'd use acrylics myself as well, especially the non-toxic waterbased ones such as the ones Games Workshop used to sell (I'm not a customer BTW).
When I did loads of painting (wow, it's like, 17yrs now....) with those, you'd generally find me sucking the paintbrush in my mouth and excess paint wiped on the back of my left hand. Saliva doesn't affect the paints finish, and the "other stuff" in saliva keeps the brush in a nice tip. Just make sure you choose nice tasting paints. Inks used to suck so badly.
You might find you'll need to prepare the surface well otherwise the paint will be "sucked" from the brush by the wood and you'll drag a dry brush a lot more. Either that or you'll end up applying paint thick to get good colouration. Sanding sealer applied to the body should prevent this.
I can't vouch for the taste of Chunkielad's Createx paints however - suck em and see!!