Playing with alphabet stencils

My camera batteries were finally fully charged yesterday, so I played with stencils. The first thing I did was set up outside on my driveway in the sun, thinking this would dry the paint faster. I forgot that even in October in the northern hemisphere, you can still get a sunburn! Today, as yesterday, my arms and neck are on fire. Next time I'll do this in the shade.
I first painted used file folders and USPS flat rate envelopes with black paint. I ended up building up to three layers for good coverage. This was the first layer.
Next, I added my pristine 3" Old English stencils on the dried substrates.
I spray painted gold over the stencils. They are no longer pristine, that's for sure.
This is the finished piece. As you can see, some of the gold seeped under the stencils and completely covered the black around the edges of the file folder.
The next thing I tried was silver glitter paint. Over that, I intended to use the red paint with the bird stencil positioned over the top of these letters. Unfortunately, the red spray paint dripped all over everything, including one of the stencils, the page I was spraying, a page that was near by, and my hands. From there, I transferred the red paint to my camera, and the stencils. Needless to say, I had a MESS. I can only imagine what my neighbors thought when I frantically tried to remove enamel paint from my camera using the hem of my sun dress.

These are some of my finished pieces. I didn't have room on my work table for all of them. You can see the lovely red mess I had on the stenciled piece when I tried to add the bird in red (piece on right in front). The plain paper (file folder) on the left was to be spray painted gold with black letters before the red dripped all over it. To save a failed project, I sprayed the silver paint over the top of the red on both these pages. It turned out much prettier than the pictures show and almost looked planned.
Here is a better view of the completed pieces.
And although I don't give him enough credit, Bleubeard was at my side every step of the way during this project.