Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Stencils!!!

This last week my sister has been making some awesome shirts and bags using freezer paper stenciling.  I think my favorite was a shirt she made for my dad that has three pictures of the plane my grandpa (Boz) flew in WWII as a Tiger. 

So, inspired by my sis, who was inspired by our cousin, I thought I would tackle my pile.  I had a bunch of shirts I have been wanting to do for my kiddos, but I HATE cutting out stencils.  I am horrible with an exacto knife.  But, I got a Silhouette SD machine a few months back, so I thought I would try it out with the freezer paper.  It bunches up a tiny bit sometimes, but not much.  Overall, it works great!



If you have never done freezer paper stenciling, you should try it.  It is so easy (once you get the stencil cut out anyway)!  Dana at MADE has an awesome tutorial about it here.  She explains everything so well and has great pictures.

It's pretty simply...

You get a shirt, or whatever it is you want to stencil on.  Wash it without fabric softener so the paint attaches better.  Then I like to iron it too.


Place your stencil where you want it to be (don't forget those inside pieces if you have some) with the shiny side on the fabric and iron it on slowly with no steam on a low to med heat setting.


Get your fabric paint, or mix some together to make your color.  Before you paint, make sure to put something thick like cardboard inside the shirt in case the paint bleeds through and your shirt gets stuck together.


Then start painting it on.  Don't brush too hard.  You want the stencil to stay put.  Also, make sure you don't paint outside of your stencil paper or you'll have a frame around the outside that you did not want.


When it's dry (a few hours) you can peel off the freezer paper to see your fun image.



Place a clean piece of fabric over your image and iron it again to set the paint.


That's it.  You're done!  You can enjoy your new creation now (but the paint bottle says not to wash it for a few days).

To find fun images, just look around online.  The possibilities are endless!



I hope you have as much fun with this as we have.  Just a warning- it's totally addicting!







Thanks for peeking in! 

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