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Make Your Own Paper Stencils - Part 1
From Urban Arts
This article shows you a way to make your own stencils on paper. You can use the stencils you make for art drawings, stickers, temporary tattoos and other creative ideas. If you were doing an art drawing you could use thin card for your stencil; or if you were doing stickers you would use sticker paper; for temporary tattoos use a plastic waterproof type of paper which peels off like a sticker and sticks to your skin. You can find the paper at most arts and crafts and stationery shops.
Find a design you want to use and trace it onto tracing paper. Now you have your basic shape. You want this to be larger than your actual picture as you’ll be drawing extra lines onto it to make shapes for each part. Then you can draw lines to define each part of the design.
A simple example would be drawing a rectangle. You draw a rectangle and then another box parallel to it on the inside of the lines. In the same way, if you’re doing the petals of a simple flower and there are 4 semi circle shaped petals then you need to make a petal shape for each one. So you end up with a kind of half circle for each part of the flower petals. With stencils you have to define each piece of your picture into shapes. So you need a shape for the stem and a shape for each petal and a shape for the bud.
If you want to make your design more creative you can also draw outlines for each part of the design and color with different colors, a bit like the lead part of a stained glass window design. This is a bit more difficult but you can do it by drawing around outside lines of each part of the design. You decide how thick you want to make the outline but if you have a thin outline it is more difficult to cut.
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