A Tip for Ironing a Freezer Stencil

While making a Walking Dead shirt as a gift for someone, I realized that stenciling words can be a pain in the butt.

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! 

 

 

 

 Perfectly positioned!

 

 

 

 I did the same with the "O" and have lovely letters.  Now I am ready to paint.

 

 

 

 Don't forget the teeny zombie on the back of the shirt!

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

Monster Books of Monsters ~ FINISHED!

Finally done!  Hooray, hooray!!!!!!!

I started these almost a year ago, it's about time I got them finished! 

If you'd like to see the progress, you can see part one,  part two and part three by clicking the links.

 They still look pretty cuddly, but I am happy with them.

 

After getting them all sewn together, all that was left to do was put their titles on.  I wanted it to look like gold embroidery.  I started by trimming the fur to give myself an area to paint on.

Then I practiced on some leftover fur that I had saved. I had gold glitter paint that I was planning to use, but it doesn't show up by itself.  I tried painting the letters in black, brown and yellow first, then went over them with the gold.  I liked the look of the yellow the best.  I have so many smears of yellow on my practice fur, it is difficult to see what I have here, but it is all my practicing.

 

Then I painted my titles on.

 

"Monster Book of"

"MONSTERS"

 

A front view.  He has a little fur blocking his leftest eye, I see.

Maybe I won't give these to the kids...

 

 

 

Now that I finished these, I can make my Iron Man T-shirt!

Thanks for looking!

:) 

Pin It