Make Your Own Stencil - 2 Different Ways
7 Materials
$75
2 Weeks
Medium
Remember when I told you about the hot knife from the wood burning set cutting through foam really easily? Well, it does a dandy job on Acetate if you want to cut your own stencil, too. FYI - *** Where can you find sheets of Acetate? Look no further than the packaging that was clear plastic you picked up the other day. Anything with a flat surface can be cut apart and used as a sheet of acetate - big or small. For example, a package covering to a new scrapbook embossing folder, a bumped out clear box that is holding a spool of ribbon onto a piece of cardboard... etc. You get the picture. There are lots of uses for them. (Later Posts...)
Method #1 - I had a texture plate from some scrapbooking items and I made a rubbing out of it with a crayon and some paper.
Then I put a sheet of acetate over it and plugged in the wood burner with the hot knife element already installed.
I put a glass cutting board under the paper pattern of the wood rubbing and sandwiched it between the cutting board and the acetate. Because the acetate is clear, all I had to do was trace the lines that were showing through from the paper. If the knife accidentally cut through the paper, it was fine. I just had to keep everything lined up together and I could cut my own stencil.
This pattern ended up being a little too tight for the use that I had in mind though, and so I opted for another way to make my stencil.
Method #2 - I found a wood pattern on the internet that I really liked by googling pictures of wood grain, printed them out and taped them together.
I then put the acetate over the picture and attempted to cut out the wood grain making a stencil with an Xacto knife and some small, delicate scissors. I only needed to cut out a small width of the stencil as I could shift around the medium I was working with to get the coverage I needed on other parts of the stencil. (No need doing extra work, with extra aggravation, right?)
I then used a removable scrapbook tape to stick the stencil to the pieces of mirror that I had broken and sanded and applied the etching cream to the stencil.
The pieces of mirror turned out looking like pieces of bark on an old tree.
I used Armour etching cream - applying it to the entire piece of mirror that was already prepared. I waited a few minutes and tried to scrape what I could of the wet substance back into the bottle off etching cream to be used again. The piece of mirror now needed to be rinsed thoroughly with water and dried with a soft towel. It was now ready for placement on the wall with mastic.
I applied blue painters tape to the mirror piece and let it dry there for 2 - 3 days until it was set, removed the tape and it was ready to declare affixed to the wall and part of my design. That will be shown on the next post... Stay Tuned!
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Wonderful idea! Thanks for sharing with us!
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