Stencil selfmade (Part II)

Hello readers! Today I want to show you another way to make your own stencils! In this opportunity I've used stencil patterns copied onto vinyl sheets. You can choose the patterns you like all around web or into stencils books.

When you have chosen yours, and transferred them to vinyl sheets then you can use easily a cutter, or as I've done, a heat cutting tool. Be sure your working area is ventilated avoiding the inhalation of the little amounts of fumes due the heat cutting process.

I've used two ways to transfer patterns on vinyl sheets. The first one was direct cutting onto original pattern, in this case I placed a sheet of semitransparent baking paper between the vinyl sheet and the pattern, avoiding the damage of the original print. In the second one I copied the pattern on the vinyl sheet with a marker, then placed a standard copy paper under this, and proceeded to cut with the heat cutting tool. In any case what you need to do is to proceed to cut on a glass surface. Finally, you must clean the point of the cutting tool during process to avoid accumulation of plastic rests on it and permitting that it cuts well... The cleaning is reached using a cloth moistened with water.

In this way you can create your own stencils saving some bucks!! 

Stencil selfmade.

Hello readers! Today I want to talk about stencils... well, it's a real fact that manufactured stencils are a bit expensive today... particularly in my country you need to pay about 6-10 euros for each stencil pattern... Then I decided to make mine in a self way...

I used A3 format cardboard, then I printed some free patterns found all around the web. I covered the cardboards with thermal adhesive vinyl and then cutted the inner of the patterns with a cutter. There are a lot of ways to make self stencils. You can use acetate or vinil sheets and cut patterns with cutter or with a heat cutting tool. It depends on how easy you want to work and of course in your budget... The important thing is to use good materials to permit your stencils to preserve along time and use. Try your own! 

Itajime applied to paper (The results).

The papers obtained are good for scrap activities, or to be used for bookbinding, origami, art journaling, and many other kinds of works!.

Here you can see some of the sheets I've done. If you are interested on some other explanations or hints please write me or leave a comment on this post. Thank you!!

Printing experiments (Part II)

Here there are more pics of my first printed papers! The first three pics show the prints obtained with combination of some "ghosts" of patterns done with pieces of cardboard cutted into geometrical shapes and then combined with patterns done with combs.

Particularly, you can see in this first pic, the shapes of swallows done with a selfmade stamp. It can be also seen patterns of elliptical greek shapes. May be I will modify a bit this paper in a future, adding more visibility to those shapes.

These other papers were made using multilayer printinig, masking some areas with cardboard cutted geometrical shapes and using combs. For the first and last pics I used to apply different color strips between the layering process. In the case of the first pic, I combined diagonal strips alternating light and dark greens. When applied dark greens I covered the zones with triangular shapes trying to uncover the light background and obtainig in this way a good effect of combination of colors and shapes. A same procedure was applied for the other geometrical shaped patterns.

Printing experiments (Part I).

Hello my readers! Here we are again with more experimentations about painting paper techniques!. This time I tell you about Printing! A wonderful activity full of colors, tools, imagination and mistery! This is the first time I try this kind of painting method and I'm sure there will be lots and lots of new tries! All that you need is a base to roll the paints and some masks and stamps! Then permit that your imagination flows as a river! 

Here you can see some pics of my first papers! Enjoy!!

 

Itajime applied to paper (The process).

Itajime is an ancient Japanese dye technique used to dye cloth. It is well known that this concept can be applied onto paper to obtain gorgeous patterns and effects. Obviously, in this case it is hard to execute the same steps as on clothes, for example it is very difficult to wrap or twist paper as you can do with a t-shirt or a piece of silk, etc. 

When you decide to use papers, it is important to choose the right kind of it, because in the process it is needed  to make folds, and the paper will be soaked with lot of liquid containing inks. The better papers to use are natural fiber as lokta, mulberry, Unryu, kozo, rice paper,but you can also use standard copy paper as I've done.

 Basically, the process consists on folding a piece of paper (square or rectangular)  into a variety of shapes, like triangular and rectangular, all of them incorporating an accordion pattern. It can be used a variety of resists in the process of diffusion of ink through the paper fibers, in my case I used clothespins.

Try to crumple the sheets of papers before you fold them, as I've done. This can give to the final papers a new appearance. Once you dipped borders and points into different inks, let rour pieces dry a bit, then carefully open them and let dry very well.

When the papers are very well dried you can proceed to iron them putting each sheet between two pieces of cotton cloth to protect them against the direct heating of the iron. Finally, you can coat the sheets back and forth using a mix of water and white glue used for papercrafts, making dry very well them.

The next pics show you some phases of the process to do this inking technique! So try your own, and let flow inks!