Re-Post from 7.09 - Freezer Paper Stencils Tutorial

I while ago on the old blog I wrote a tutorial for making freezer paper stencils on your die-cut machine.  I thought now would be a great time to bring it back out and show it to you again.

This is one of my all time favorite projects.  We did a Girls Camp craft that year using freezer paper stencils to put the girls names on their camp t-shirts.  I've used them quite a few times and every time I just love it!

This is a great project for kids to help out with.  You'll need to do the preparation and the ironing.  They can do the painting and even the removing of the stencil.  I imagine you'll need to do the cleaning up, too, if your kids are anything like mine.

Cutting and Using 

Freezer Paper Stencils

Freezer paper stencils are so fun and easy to use 

you’ll wonder why you didn’t try it sooner! 

1. Create your design.

Method A: If you want your letters to be the part that is painted, create a border around the letters of some kind. In this example, the word Samantha will be painted and anything outside the scalloped border. The white parts will be the paper stencil. For this method, you may want to choose either a stencil font or create bridges to connect the centers of your letters to the outside. Otherwise, you’ll have to save the centers of your letters and iron them on in place.

Method B: If you want the letters to be unpainted with a field of color, create a decorative border around the letters and a second border around the decorative one. In this example, the letters will not be painted, but the scalloped rectangle around it will. Optionally, anything outside the plain rectangle can also be painted. The white parts will be the freezer paper stencil.

2. Place your freezer paper shiny side up on your cutting mat. Cutter shown is the KNK Maxx, but any cutter will cut this material. It’s important that the shiny side is up because the shiny side won’t stick to your cutting mat very well and may shift during cutting.

3. Open your design in your software and “mirror” it so that it is backwards on your screen. This is so that when you cut it out it will be forwards when you iron the shiny side down on your material.

4. Cut your design.

5. Remove the paper from the cutting mats, saving the parts you plan to iron down to your material.

Method A: If you didn’t use a stencil font, be sure you save the centers of your letters so you can iron them down in place.

Method B: Be sure to save the dots of for each “i” or “j” and any punctuation so you can iron them down in place.

6. Iron all the relevant parts for your stencil down to your material. Grown-ups should do this part! Be sure you have the shiny side of the stencil down or you’ll iron it to your iron! Use an iron set to medium-high and press down for a few seconds without moving or rubbing.

7. Paint all the areas you want painted with fabric or other appropriate paint.

8. Kids will want to decorate the rest of their project, too!

9. Allow the paint to dry completely. If you try to remove the stencil before the paint is dry, you may blur your edges and they won’t be clean and crisp.

10. Carefully peel the freezer paper off your material. A pin or tweezers will help get any little bits left behind.

11. Be sure to follow the manufacturer’s instructions on both your garment and the paint for laundering.

12. Enjoy your new wearable art project!!!

Try combining these two methods in one project like the shirts below!

Here is an compact and easily downloadable version of this tutorial. Just click on the image to open it larger to read and/or save it. It's slightly abbreviated but the essentials are there.  You can pin this, too, for later!

We loved these shirts so much that the girls wore them all the time.  We recently passed them down to some friends with little girls about the same distance apart in age.  They wore them to Disneyland and got so many comments on how cute their shirts were!  I'm thinking I need to make a new batch!

Time to get crafty, people!

Make Your Own Monday: Faux Mercury Glass Pumpkins

Ahhh... Monday again... most people are not a fan of Monday's and I'm not really either.  It means I have to get up at 5:45 and wrangle the girls to the bus.  But I do enjoy the absolute quiet that settles over the house when I get back from the bus stop.  It's still early enough at 6:45 to have that super quiet feel.  Love it!

This past weekend we went to Apple Annie's in Willcox, AZ for a day of fun.  We had such a great time last year that we had to do it again!  This time we wen't with some of our older kids, Trevor with his wife, Molli, and little girl, Alana, and our other son, Alex.  We had lunch in the orchard, bought some yummy fudge {which I had for breakfast today, shame!}, got happily lost in their ginormous corn maze, ate some shaved ice, and went on a hayride to pick pumpkins.  They day was only marred by Hailey splatting face first in the pumpkin patch {those vines are prickly!} and someone making off with the big pumpkin Trevor and family had picked out.  Overall though, it was a great day!  I took some cute pictures that I just had to share.

Eat a hotdog in the middle of an apple orchard? Why yes, I think I will, thank you very much!

The girls got to make their own jump ropes with a rope maker.  They thought this was awesome!

The apples of my eye, for sure!

The corn maze was awesome.  There was a bridge we came upon in the middle of it that allowed you to see the whole thing from the top.  Towards the end, Victor and I were "accidentally" separated from the others.  We could hear them but they didn't know where we were.  It was too funny to hear the girls talk about what would happen if we got lost in there.

Gotta share cute little Ali hanging out in the pumpkin wagon.  She was starting to get pretty tired.

 Hailey in the pumpkin wagon being... well... Hailey.

My favorite picture of the day: Ali trying to help herself to the Tip Pumpkin.  Hahahaha!

Okay, now that I've forced you to sit through a slide show of  our family outing.... on with the show!

I've decided to try a little something new on my blog.  I want to attempt a new Monday series called "Make your Own Monday."  This series would focus on making your own versions of popular products for less, plus some interesting tutorials on crafting techniques, with the occasional project thrown in.

Today you are going to learn to Make Your Own... Faux Mercury Glass Pumpkins

I came across a tutorial on the blog-o-sphere for doing this recently.  I'll be darned if I can find it again!  In looking around there are several tutorials out there for creating a mercury glass effect.  Some are more authentic looking than what I've done, but they seemed a lot more involved.  I like how easy this method was and it looks pretty cool.  I might try some other methods later.

Essentially, you start out with a cheap-o pumpkin {or other object there's no saying this has to be pumpkins} and end up with a cool-shiny-mottled-silver-and-black pumpkin.

^-- This... to That.. --v

What you'll need is some pumpkins or other objects, a can of shiny black spray paint, and a can of shiny metallic silver spray paint.  I discovered later that there is a product called Krylon Looking Glass Mirror-Like Paint.  If I do this again, I'm totally trying that instead of the regular metallic silver I used.  Don't forget the newspaper and most importantly, folks, do this outside! Do I need to tell you that?  Yeah, I probably do.  Maybe not YOU specifically, but it's those other people who've never spray painted before.  I was a little woozy after doing this outside! Spray painting inside is just right out.

You can see in this photo the difference between just painting  them silver.  The little gourd at the front is just spray painted silver.  The one next to it has the mercury glass effect.  Totally different, don't you think?

The wet black spray paint under the light coating of silver really gives depth and dimension to this project.

Here is the tutorial.  If you are having trouble reading it or would like to save it for later, just click on the image to open it larger.

As always, if you make something based on this tutorial, feel free to post it on your blog or in the VDBC gallery and post a link down in the comments section!

Time to get crafty, people!


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