Second Thursday Tutorial: creating handmade stencils

 

I'd like to begin by wishing my dear friend RO! a very happy birthday.  Hope it's filled with cheeseburgers and a good book, dear friend.

Back in June, I enrolled in one of those free courses many of us were offered.  This one was a Willa Workshop where we learned how to deal with some of our scraps.  However, the post that made the most impact on me was the one by Roxanne Padgett.  It was the last video and I only had a chance to watch it once.  What stuck in my mind was she used one of my favorite substrates.

These are the materials you will need to create your own stencils: used file folders and scissors.  Imagination is optional.

There are TONS of tutorials on the internet showing how to make your own stencils.  However, the majority of them involve an Xacto knife, something I am not comfortable holding, much less gripping, cutting, twisting, and turning.

I want to point out, I have two types of used manila file folders.  One has no spine, while the one with the arrow shows there is a spine.

You probably can't see the spine, but it is there in case the papers inside the file folder are too thick to lie flat otherwise.  These file folders only had single sheets or very few sheets originally stored in them.

If you choose to use the file folder with the spine, I suggest you cut and recycle the spine.  Once you get paint on your file folder, the spine will be quite obvious.

Just my luck I chose to use a file folder with a straight cut tab.  This means there is one long tab on the folder. Actually, that may work in my favor.  I cut the file folder at the tab, so had two ample working surfaces to create large stencils.

I started by removing the excess tab on the smaller piece and folded it in half width wise.

I didn't have a plan or a reason for cutting this piece.  Instead, I just cut away until I thought it looked OK.

What a horrendous disaster.

Maybe a few more cuts will help!

Personally, I can't say it helped that much!!  Not a stencil I will ever use, I fear.

That's when I decided to do a bit of planning.

After folding the file folder in half, I used a paper cup to create the stencil with circles.  I freehand cut the other piece, also after folding the file folder in half.  I got two large usable stencils and one small sad stencil from a single file folder.  Since I have many more of these file folders, I will be cutting more stencils, now I know a bit more about what I'm doing.

Ruminations:

I have a feeling I need to cut my stencils in a more organic way.

I need to make more stencils with repeating patterns.

I think I like the size of the small and middle stencils, but the large one, which depends on a repeat design, may be too large for most of my journal pages.

 

Thank you ever so much for joining me today.  I greatly appreciate it and you.  Once this post goes live, you will find, and be able to access it forever on my Tutorials page.