Aloha Chickadees!
This bit of island therapy is great for crafters and non-crafters alike. I recently stumbled upon a fun and totally addictive hobby called Freezer Paper Stenciling.
I'm not an artist, but I trace like one! Seriously. You just have to be good at tracing and cutting with an exacto knife.
It's easy. Follow me:
Find an image you like. The stencil I'm using here is one I found on the web - it's the American Sign Language alphabet. I learned this from the back of the Helen Keller autobiography in 4th grade. My friend Helen knows sign language too, so I traced and painted her dog's name (I P O), in sign language letters for her on a t-shirt.
Step 1: Place a piece of heavy cardboard down on your tracing table and place your image under a piece of freezer paper. Freezer paper can be found in your supermarket next to wax paper and parchament paper. Trace out the image (shiny side down) and cut it out with an exacto blade.
Step 2: Iron your cut out stencil to your t-shirt SHINY SIDE DOWN. Use a hot iron. To prevent paint from bleeding through, place another piece of freezer paper on the other side of the t-shirt and iron that on. Iron both pieces on at the same time.
Step 3: Paint! I used non-toxic Jacquard paints that I ordered from Dharma Trading Co. www.dharmatrading.com
Step 4: Let it dry. It can take overnight to dry. If you're impatient like me and hate watching paint dry - you can use a blow dryer to hasten the process. If you use multiple layers and colors you must wait for each layer to dry or your paint will run together.
Step 5: When the paint is dry, peel off the freezer paper from around the image and in back - and Voila'! You're a talented artist!
Step 6: You'll need to set the paints so it won't run in the wash. Place a cotton piece of material (something you won't mind getting paint on) on top of the image and on the other side of the image and iron with a hot iron. A little paint will come off on the cotton material but better there than other clothes in your laundry.
Check out some of my other stenciled clothing here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26458255@N08/
And check out what some of the real freezer paper stencil pros are doing at the Group Pool on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/fpstencils/
Happy Stenciling!
Mahalo,
Mauiminnow
