Lesson 2: Adding your Individual Stamp - Stencil Equipment
Out of the Ordinary Stencil Material
Stenciling isn't all about mylar cutouts ready packaged at the crafts store, or cardboard cutouts from mass produced books.
Look around you. There are all kinds of other possibilities. Here is where your true creativity shines though. You'll be able to create designs and effects that are not available in any store and so are all your own.
- Lace and doilies Lace makes a beautiful stencil, whether it's a tiny scrap wrapped around a plain pot, or stretched out on the wall to imitate wallpaper. I use lace scraps and old doilies and wrap them over terra cotta pots spray-painted in a contrasting color. I then carefully spray the pot with the lace arranged over it and then, when the paint is dry, remove the lace. You would swear it was still there.
You can use this technique to "stencil" lace-curtain panels behind a stenciled window, or, measuring carefully, create wallpaper by spraying through an old lace curtain or tablecloth until you have covered the wall. If you do this, make sure to mask the surrounding area carefully to prevent overspray. But the effect is astonishing.
You can also use strips of lace to stencil borders. Once again, masking is the key to your success. With borders the easiest method is to plan for a border an inch or two wider than the actual lace. Mask off the surrounding area, use stencil adhesive to position the lace and spray away. When you remove the lace it will be a reverse stencil - we will see the original wall color through it, but the inch above and below the lacy stencil will be a contrasting color, as will the "holes" in the lace.
An airbrush will allow you to be quite precise with this; an airless spray gun will eliminate a lot of overspray problems. But for small projects, a can of spray paint may be fastest and most efficient. And for lace, I have found that pray paint is the way to go. Brushing moved the material around too much and creates too blurry an effect to be satisfying.
- Leaves and other shapes You may have seen stencils that are "reversed" - so that the painting leaves a silhouette of the objects unpainted while the bridges surrounding it are the painted area. It's a curious effect that can be very attractive. It's also an easy effect for you to create on your own.
For instance, gather some attractive leaves. Ferns are nice. Japanese maple leaves can be beautiful. Arrange them on a flat surface, perhaps using a bit of stencil adhesive so that they stay put. Then take a can of spray paint and spray the panel so that it is well covered. When you remove the leaves you will have a reverse stencil created from life.
Any flat object with an interesting shape can be used for this as long as you don't mind that object being covered in paint when you are done. Old bottle caps and jar lids can create planets - add some stick-on stars that you can remove later - spray around them for an instant solar system.
- Masking tape You can't get much more basic that masking tape. And yet it can make a surprisingly effective stencil. As I mentioned previously, you can use it to mark off stone or brick shapes on a wall. Paint over them; remove the tape and the resulting space looks like mortar or grout, especially if you painted the wall in a grout color first. For this to look most realistic, you want a masking tape called quilter's tape, which is only ¼" thick. Regular masking tape is ½" or wider and too large to be convincing.
But whatever the width of your tape, you can use it to mask of geometric shapes, parquet type designs, various squares and blocks. Paint over it all in a single color and then use sponges and wood graining tools to create a variety of textures within the shapes. Create fake parquet by staining or painting the wood first in a light color, then taping off some areas to create a pattern, and stain the open spaces a darker color. There are endless possibilities in a roll of masking tape, a jar or two of paint and your imagination.
