You are My Sunshine - Making Re-usable Stencils and Masks

Hello, Janet here with a media I haven't tried before ... Silhouette Stencil Material (the non-adhesive variety). It comes in a pack of six letter-sized, thick, plastic-y sheets. My first thought was that it would be perfect for making stencils to use with some newly acquired glitter paste. I was impressed with the results I thought I'd share the process of making, and using the stencils, together with the finished card.

Design Selection

I chose a stencil design from the Silhouette Design Store by Amanda McGee called Sunburst Mat Stencil. It is designed to be cut as a 12-inch square, but was fine reduced in size to fit my 150 cm (6-inch) square card blanks.

You'll find many more suitable designs in the Silhouette Design Store if you type "stencil" in the search box, and then filter the results by "Regular Cut". The easiest designs to choose are those that already have a box around them, but there are other designs that will work too. Just ensure that the design you choose doesn't have any unconnected interior parts within the design, as those would be lost.


Stencil Design

The designs can easily be converted to stencils by adding a surrounding box if they don't already have one. I made a mini stencil of the centre of the sun by drawing a circle centred on the sun part of the stencil, within a square aligned with the bottom left-hand corner of the stencil. I then selected the circle and the square, and made them into a compound path. In the screenshot below I've arranged both on a US Letter Size page (to match the stencil material).

Cutting the Stencil Material

I found the default setting for "Stencil Material" cut well. I initially tried a test cut with reduced force, but in the case of this material, the default setting was better.  A sticky mat is important with the force this high so I added some additional painter's tape around two edges of the sheet as my mat had started to lose some of it's sticky.

The pieces cut beautifully with a single cut. The slight milkiness of the sheet made it easy to locate and remove the waste pieces from the mat.  The waste from the smaller stencil can be retained to use as a mask.

Using the Stencil Material

I cut a card panel in watercolour paper to fit the interior width of the stencil, then adhered the stencil to the paper on the back with low-tac painter's tape. Then I added some more tape to top and bottom on the front of the stencil.

I mixed pigment ink with my glitter texture paste in two yellow shades. I spread the lighter colour around the outer edge, and the darker shade to the centre. The thickness of the stencil allowed an even, but shallow layer of paste to be spread on the surface. I removed the stencil while the paste was still wet, and cleaned it right away.

Once the paste had dried, I used the little circle stencil to add a centre to the sun. The proportion of ink to glitter paste was greater than previously, and gave a more opaque look.

Once the paste had completely dried I trimmed the panel and it was ready to be added to the card blank.

Cleaning the Stencils

The paste is best wiped off the stencils right away. Any residue can be removed using soapy water and a nail brush. Once dried with kitchen paper they are as good as new, and ready to re-use.


Finishing the card

To finish off the card I printed the 'You Are My Sunshine' Phrase onto vellum. I made an extra couple of lines using the existing words and some letters from the ED George Font, by the same artist, Emily Dyer.  The font is not a perfect match, but it was close enough.

Then I simply added clouds from another file, and some hearts in various sizes copied from the phrase.

I loved using the stencil material and have all kinds of other projects in mind both for this stencil and for others. I urge you to try it out with glitter paste, mousse, texture paste, or sprays and mists.  Do let us know how you get on.


Bye for now,

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