A Covered Journal Decorated with a Homemade Stencil

 Here is my third try at decorating my covered journals. (check out this link to see how I cover journals). This time I used a Cricut cutting machine that I had checked out from my local library and some repositionable vinyl cling to make my own stencil. 

First I went to Pixabay to find a black and white design that I thought would make a good stencil.  I tried to choose one where there weren't many free-floating shapes because I didn't have any stencil transfer paper.  If I had some transfer paper I could have tried one more complex. I was also looking for one that was more "cool" than "cute" since all my designs so far were pretty frilly. Transfering the stencil to the book was a little tricky.  I had to be careful not to rip it and to get it lying flat. Once I got it on, however, it was pretty easy to do the painting. I just used a regular paint brush and some gold acrylic paint.  When you do stencils on cloth, the paint has to be fairly dry.  Don't thin it with water at all before you apply it or it will soak and spread into the cloth. Once it was dry I removed the stencil. When I did, I realized I had forgotten the little piece that would have been the eye!  Time for a quick save. I found a little red jewel and glued it on with fabric glue and I think it turned out looking cool. 

 

Here are two more that I made with homemade stencils.  On the rose one I used two different colors of paint to make the petals and the stem, and even did some shading on the petals. In the end the background was too busy so I didn't like it as well.  

The cat one turned out better, but it was really hard to transfer! I basically had to transfer a bunch of little pieces with tweezers. I really like the design, though, and I think with this complicated of a stencil it was good I did it on a solid color.

In the end, making my own stencils was a fun challenge, but it is too hard to with a class. If I ever teach this as a class (hopefully at Pinners in the fall) I knew I would have to use a different kind of stencil.

Stay tuned to find out how that worked out.