Lesson 2: Adding your Individual Stamp - Stencil Equipment
Using Store-Bought Stencils Creatively
If you want to go even further beyond the same old stencils you can find in the local crafts store, you have choices. The first is simply to use those stencils creatively. A second is to learn to cut your own, as we explained in the first lesson. Or you can start looking around at ordinary household objects that can be used to create stenciled effects. Let's look at just a few ways that you can do something out of the ordinary with a fairly odrinary traditional stencil.
- Regular stencils Just because a stencil was created one way doesn't mean that you can't use it in a different way. For instance, not using all the overlays in a stencil package may give you a more primitive effect - which may be exactly the effect you're after.
Or take what was designed to be a border stencil and just use an element or two from it. I have one border of mice, lily of the valley and mushrooms, and have used only the mice, or only the flowers, as mural elements.
I have also left out elements of a stencil if I didn't like them. Let's say I wanted to do a bouquet of flowers but the only one I could find had a bow wrapped around the stems. I simply taped off the bow and stenciled the rest. Alternatively, I could have taped off most of the stems except for that which would logically show coming out of a vase, and then used a vase or urn stencil to create an entirely different picture.
- Faux finish stencils There are a lot of stencils out there that are of things like columns, fences, birdhouses, etc. Instead of sticking to straight stenciling techniques, why not use faux finish techniques to make them your own? For instance, use the marbling technique that we learned in the first lesson on a column stencil. Much more realistic than plain stenciling, and it will look far more sophisticated. And it won't look like anyone else's. The stencil here was done with a sponge - very quickly - dabbing on green, pale blue and a bit of brown to create a faux verdigris effect. It took about one quarter of the time that dabbing with a stencil brush might have done - and with a more realistic and interesting end result.
Use the wood grainer mentioned earlier to make a stenciled fence look more like real wood. So the same for birdhouses. Or combine techniques here. Give the birdhouse a faux wood grained roof and pole, but then take a small floral stencil and use it to decorate the fronts and sides of it, just like the expensive hand-painted birdhouses you see in catalogs today.
If you're doing a wrought iron gate or fence, give it a faux verdigris finish. Some stencils are specifically made for using these techniques on, like these from Victoria Larsen Designs which come with faux finish instructions - but you can apply these techniques to many other stencils that are available today.
