Covered Books Decorated with a Silk Screen Stencil

 If you have been following my recent posts, you know I have been experimenting to figure an accessible way to decorate a cloth covered journal. I tried an iron-on, a hand painted picture, and using stencils I made with a Cricut.  Some turned out better than others, but I knew I hadn't come up with a craft I could complete with a class in one hour. 

I liked the way the stenciled covers turned out, but the homemade stencils were difficult to work with.  I decided to look for a self-adhesive stencil I could purchase ready-made.  I have had too many bad experiences with non-adhesive stencils shifting, or paint seeping outside the stencil to want to try a non-adhesive stencil.  When I looked online, though, the only adhesive ones could find said they were for silk screening.  I had never tried silk screening stencils before and looking at the pictures online I couldn't quite tell what they were like.  I decided to try them out. 

Here are the ones I got from Amazon

I decided to try a simple one first.  The little bird appealed to me because I like the idea of notes on a notebook. It was so much easier to use the silkscreen stencils than the homemade one.  You just cut out the one you want, pull of the back and stick it on your project. The white part of the stencil is actually a mesh, but it is fine enough that when you paint over it it doesn't leave a mesh pattern. The mesh holds all the parts of the stencil in place so it is easy to make it lie flat and you don't have to worry about missing a little piece (like a dragon's eye, ha, ha)

My success with the little bird gave me courage to try one of the more complex stencils.  I decide to go for it and try the biggest one, the bike. As I painted it with regular acrylic paints and using a regular paint brush, I was careful to paint different parts of the picture with different colors.  That was a little tricky, especially on the tires where the lines were really thin, but in the end I was super happy with how it turned out.

Even though the background cloth has a pattern, the bright contrasting colors I chose for the bike really pop out. I kind of wish I had made the butterflies a different color.  (Yes, those are supposed to be butterflies flying above the bike, not petals falling off the flowers, but oh well.)  Regardless, it is my favorite of all the journals I have decorated, and it gave me confidence that I could do a class where we cover a book and then stencil on a design all in an hour and actually end up with something really nice.