While making a Walking Dead shirt as a gift for someone, I realized that stenciling words can be a pain in the butt.
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| This still needs a final wash to soften up the paint and get the cat and dog hairs off it. |
Letters can be tricky when freezer stenciling a shirt. Especially when the letters have holes in them like "D", "a" "e" "R" and "O", all of which are in this shirt!
But, through practice, I have learned a little trick.
I make my stencils by printing what I want out on a piece of regular printer paper. Then I tape a larger piece of freezer paper, shiny side down, to my cutting mat (I have graduated from a piece of cardboard to a real cutting mat! What a difference!) and I tape my print out onto the freezer paper and cut through both pieces with an exacto-knife.
It is tedious, but worth it.
Never throw anything away! You need your freezer paper holes, so keep track of them. You also will want your plain paper letters.
In the following photo, I have ironed down the big piece of my stencil and most of my holes. I still need to iron the holes in place for my "R" and my "O".
I saved my plain paper "R" to use as a template for properly placing my hole.
See? I carefully put my plain paper "R" in place and then, even more carefully, placed my freezer paper hole (shiny side down! That is very important or you will adhere it to your iron!)
Then, even more carefully than before, iron over your letters. (and marvel at the way I was able to iron with one hand and take a photo with the other and never scorch my project!)
You will iron the hole in place and just remove the plain paper "R" with no trouble!
I am very happy that the recipient of this shirt really likes it. I have even seen him wearing it! And I don't think he put it on out of obligation either. ;)
Thanks for looking!
:) Pin It
Hey Angela, looks good! I do the same trick, works well! I have been putting on a first coat of black, then I do 2-3 coats of white. The black will bleed through first, then the white will come out clean! I LOVE FREEZER paper shirts! Did you know also, that you can just cut the f. paper to 8.5" and feed it right through your printer? Print on the none glossy side. Works great, and saves a step. I also print it out from Publisher and put a rectangle around my text so it's easy to line it up straight when you're eye balling it. Just a thought! :) Love your craftiness! :)
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I've never tried to print directly on the freezer paper. I would think that the curve of the paper(from being on the roll) would make it jam in the printer. I think I will try to get it as flat as possible and try that next time. Putting a rectangle around the text is genius! Thank you for the suggestions!
DeleteHow could I missed this post Ange? This is awesome! Both the t-shirt and the tutorial. ;)
ReplyDeleteYou've been busy! I'm happy that you found it. AND liked it!!!!!
DeleteVery interesting project Angela! Thank you for sharing :)
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