Stencil along: more on using Microsoft Word to prepare a stencil

I seem to have conveniently forgotten my own freezer paper stencil-along timeline. The goal of a "decent stencil in a month" has fallen by the wayside, as I digress on assorted experiments.

This week I have been fighting exploring Microsoft Word a little further to see if it really is possible to prepare stencil images without the assistance of nice graphics programs like Photoshop. Using the scale model digger pictured above (its not mine, I promise) and a little persistence with Brightness and Contrast in Microsoft Word's image editing features, I have a new stencil underway.

The downside of flattening an image to Black & White

Last week I used a very quick and dirty method in Microsoft Word for flattening an image down to two colours (Format picture > Recolor > Black and white). It was simple and works well with simple, high contrast images, but I found that I lost a great deal of detail in the picture of the tractor that I was using.

To demonstrate, here is a before and after showing what happens when I flatten this digger ....





It becomes sort of a black blob with a scoop. Depending who you are creating the stencil for, this might be perfectly fine. For example, I'm sure my Argy would still see a John Deere digger clearly in this image!

Using brightness and contrast

A better way to go, is to adjust the image using the Brightness (adding more white or black) and Contrast (changing the difference between lightest and darkest areas) features.

So first I increased the Contrast ... right up to 100%. You can see that this reduces the image to just three colours - red, yellow and black. This is perfect as this week I am trying out a multi-colour stencil.



Next I played with the Brightness levels. Someone may be able to help here, but I found this to be a very inexact science. I simply adjusted it by eye. If the brightness is increased too much, I found a lot of the image disappeared (see below).



Likewise when the brightness was too low, a lot of detail was lost (and below again).



I thought that I what finally came up with (below) probably gave a suitable level of definition to the stencil. (An increase in brightness of about 40%).



Applying further image effects in Microsoft Word

And now a quick piece of advice, based on experience. Even though you are making visible changes to the image, every detail about the underlying graphic remains intact. (You may notice in your travels that there is a Reset picture option you can select). Microsoft Word applies many of its image editing features to the underlying graphic and not to alterations you have made. For example: after altering the brightness and contrast, I thought I'd change the image from colour to grey scale. Whoosh! All my work gone. Grey scale was applied to the original photo.

To get around this you can do a little hack workaround like this. Copy the altered image from Microsoft Word into something simple like the Paint accessory that comes with Windows. Then copy it again and paste it back into Microsoft Word. Et voila! You can now continue making changes, like I have done below.





From here ...

Sometime after the weekend I hope to have a finished stencil to show you. I am going to be using this digger and trying out a number of colours. Argy is going to love it (he's my least critical audience). Rather than the Speedball screen printing ink that I have been using I've purchased some acrylic paint and textile medium to mix up.

During the week I read some instructions about creating a multiple colour freezer paper stencil. They said that you should only place the different colours adjacent to each other. Never over one another. Shhhh, don't tell anyone .... guess what I'm going to try and do ....

Be sure to look at the sidebar for the latest on other stencil-alongers. There's been some great stuff happening.

Stencil-along: making a stencil from a photo (without Photoshop)

Earlier today, at Chez Hoppo Bumpo ...

Me: What do you think this is, boys?
Bargy: Hammer
Argy: Tractor
Mr HB: Freaky

Although a bit offended, I do admit Mr HB had a point (though I won't even try and work out what Bargy was thinking). I couldn't find a suitable digger image to try out this week, so settled for a funny little toy tractor. For reasons that will become apparent, the tractor stencil ended up being rather abstracted. Something that looked better from far away - far, far away. Still, I don't mind sharing my warts-and-all stencil with you - its all part of the fun.

Creating a stencil from a photo
So to give a bit of background ...

This last week, my goal has been to create a stencil from a photo. There are lots of great tutorials about that advise how to do this, should you be the proud owner of Adobe Photoshop. As I don't have Photoshop, I decided to see if there was something else I could make do with.

When creating a stencil from a photo, the aim is to flatten the image back to just two colours - black and white. During the week I read that Microsoft Word might be suitable.

Here's what I did ...

First, I selected a photo image of a vintage tin toy tractor from the Microsoft Clipart gallery (which was disappointingly light-on for good diggers, exacators and backhoe loaders). You could, however, insert any photo into a Word document.


I am using Microsft Word 2007

Next I used a quick-and-dirty method for converting the image to two colours. After selecting the picture and selecting Format picture > Recolor > Black and white, the image was reduced to black and white. Nifty, huh?



Well, actually the image was a little flat, having lost some its highlights. You'll notice this around the tyres in particular. Depending upon your image this may or may not matter. In this case, I think it would have been nicer to have a bit more definition around the wheels. (I suspect if I'd experimented with brightness and contrast - found under Format picture - it might have made a difference too). Never mind - onward ho!

EDIT: More on brightness and contrast at this subsequent post (10/10/08).

Tracing and cutting
Next I traced the image onto a piece of freezer paper.



At this point I manually smoothed out the image and dispensed with teeny dots all over the place. I could have taken the opportunity to redraw some of the stencil in parts to give more definition to the wheels ... but didn't! I also took care to try eliminate islands wherever possible. An island is a blocked part of the stencil that isn't connected to the main stencil in any way. It "floats".

In fact islands aren't too hard to manage when you are using freezer paper, as they are effectively stuck in place during the stencilling process. But they are easily lost during cutting out and annoying to position. So best to get rid of them by creating "bridges" to them in the main stencil. I was able to do this in all but two places. The steering wheel has a number of tiny little bridges just a couple of millimetres wide.

Cutting out the stencil was the lengthiest step in the whole process. Its so hard to watch Law and Order and cut out at the same time. You're sunk if you don't pay attention at the start; you'll have no idea what is going on. This applies to both Law and Order and the stencil.



Fusing and painting
I was very pleased to find that with the iron temperature nice and hot and all water emptied from the iron, that the freezer paper stuck down nicely this week. I did however need to take care to really press down on the fine little bridges and not accidentally move them sideways with the iron. After this the painting was a cinch.

Another stencil completed; another cushion for Argy (who after all, was the only member of the family who correctly identified this as being a tractor. But then, going by recent history, maybe that's not saying much).

Goals for next week
I am still aiming to find a decent digger to stencil. I wouldn't mind carrying out some experiments to see if it is possible to get a better result using just Microsoft Word to edit a photo. Any suggestions welcome. It might be nice to try multiple colours in one stencil. Can you believe how amazing this one is?

So, this is what I am hoping to do for the last week of the stencil-along:

1. Research the function of brightness and contrast in creating a successful photo-derived stencil
2. Create a digger stencil
3. Create a multiple colour stencil

Have you been stencilling too? How are you going? I'll pop round to take a look! To see more stencils, head over to the sidebar and check out the links.

Stencil-along - end of week 3 (almost)

The cutting mat and hobby cutter have just been packed away. The iron turned off. The cat and the milk bottles put out. The lights turned off. The ink left to dry.

I'm running a little late on my freezer paper stencil update this week. There was a hold-up. A big one. The culprit was the home PC - it overheated and threw a hissy fit. Being as my two-toned stencil image was on said PC, I also overheated and threw a hissy fit. There's nothing like a bit of good old-fashioned petulance, followed by some prolonged sulking.

Anyway, three cheers for Mr Hoppo Bumpo, who got the PC working again this evening. That deed was almost enough for me to overlook a disparaging comment about my stencil (the words that's weird, never feel that encouraging do they?).

Tune in tomorrow, if you'd like to see my weird two-toned stencil. If you'd like to see other freezer-paper stencils (which almost certainly will not be at all weird), check out the sidebar to the right.

Stencilling-along this week

Its taken me a little while to decide my next freezer paper stencilling step. But its become clear - I would like to have a go at turning a photo of a digger like this, into a stencil (.... isn't this everyone's dream?). Er, maybe not this particular digger .... though it was a particular favourite with certain members of the family, who happily posed in front of it (see bottom left corner, for proud, small boy).

If I understand the small amount of reading that I have done, I will need to convert a photo to grayscale and then adjust the brightness and contrast until the image is two toned. Simple, right? Or maybe not. I don't own Photoshop, so I might have a bit of work ahead of me.

Goals for this week

1. Read about creating a two-toned image
2. Work out the best way to create a two-toned image with an application on my PC
3. Read about how islands and bridges are best used to keep the whole show together (or not)
4. Create a stencil from a two-toned image

References
I'm going to have a look through Crafster's stencilling FAQ and do a bit of Googling, to see what information I can come up with. Despite not owning Photoshop I still think this tutorial at Photoshop Lab is great. I also like this one over at Melissa Clifton's site. They give a fantastic idea of what you are trying to achieve. I am going to try and find the simplest way possible to create my two-toned digger making do with the software I've got (any suggestions welcome!).

Let's see how I go ... I'll let you know on Thursday.

Stencil-along: end of week 2

I'm sure that last week, I made wild claims about doing test runs on calico and such-like, but I got a bit excited (and frankly, started to run out of time) so I jumped in feet-first. Here we are at the end of week two of the freezer paper stencil-along and here is my first stencil: a shiny cement mixer on a red poly-cotton. Bet no-one else thought to do one of those!

In fact, from a bit of blog reading that I have been doing today, I know that there are no other cement mixers. But there are some fantastic stencil ideas. Do go and have a look (see the sidebar for other people who are stencilling).

I made the stencil while sitting with Argy and Bargy at the sandpit outside, so I used little scissors to do the cutting. On the whole the scissors worked quite well, but I can see that for beautiful clean, straight lines, you really need to use a craft knife, mat and ruler. Or perhaps just be a little more co-ordinated than I am?

Although I really loved making the stencil and using the shiny Speedball brand screen printing ink, this first go was really a bit of a dud.

Everything was going swimmingly until I fused the freezer paper and there was a modicum of water in the iron. Yep, before I could catch it, a teensy puff of steam came out and that was that. More Ramsay-level swearing. The paper refused to fuse in parts - mostly the thin strips on the body of the mixer. If that happens there is absolutely no chance of redemption. Game over.

I knew with unfused paper the stencilling would be dodgy, but I decided to press on regardless. The ink did get under the stencil in places, but I guess it isn't too bad. It dried, then set pretty evenly (apart from a few stray blobs) and has subsequently hot-washed and tumble-dried (for my extreme-durability test) really well.

I won't win any prizes for this attempt, but I think the print will be ok for a cushion that Argy has requested. And gosh it was fun! You've got to try it.

Goals for the next week
The cement mixer image is OK for a first attempt, but a bit on the ... ahem ... basic side, shall we say? I'd love to come up with a really funky image. But I know there are all sorts of clever things that I need to learn about preparing a funky stencil image. I'm just not sure what those things are yet. I don't know, what I don't know.

So before working out my goals for next week, I'm going to do a little bit of reading. Then, as they say, I'll keep you posted. I do, however, have a sneaking suspicion that next stop will be a shiny digger stencil ...

Stencil-along: end of week 1

I can happily report this week, that I haven't yet botched stencilling. (Of course by dedicating a week to locating supplies and reading tutorials, I have probably cleverly kept myself out of harm's way. Let's wait and see what happens next week).

The freezer paper turned up nice and promptly yesterday from Punch With Judy. I ordered two brands for comparison: Reynold's (which is on a roll) and C. Jenkin's which comes in pre-cut sheets. It will be interesting to see if there is any difference when I use them. The Reynolds paper seems a little thinner and waxier and might be a little more transparent for tracing. The C. Jenkin's paper is labelled as being "industrial", which sounds awfully promising (I'm a sucker for a good adjective). It will also be easier to store, as its flat.

Over the past few days I've been reading through the tutorial links that I posted last week and have done a little extra browsing through places like Flickr, where people have posted pictures and explanations of their stencilling. If you are interested in stencilling too and haven't yet had time to do some reading, here is a brief summary.

Stencilling process

1. Trace your design onto the freezer paper
2. Cut out the design
3. Using an iron, fuse the freezer paper to your fabric
4. If you are stencilling onto a garment, place a piece of cardboard or another piece of freezer paper, shiny-side up between the fabric layers to prevent bleeding
5. Apply the paint within the cut-away stencil
6. Dry the fabric
7. Peel away the stencil
8. Heat set the paint

Creating your design

• If you are looking for inspiration, there are a lot of free stencils on the Internet
• Trace your design onto the matte side of the paper
• Decide whether you are going to have any floating pieces within the cut-out, as these will need to be cut away and carefully saved
• Use a craft knife or small scissors to cut out the design
• If you use a knife, you will also need a cutting mat
• Keep a large border around the stencil, to avoid stray paint getting onto your fabric

Fusing the paper

• It is best to have washed and dried your garment prior to stencilling
• Place the paper shiny side down
• Arrange and line-up any floating pieces carefully
• Iron the paper for about 30 seconds
• Make sure the steam setting on your iron is off

Applying the fabric paint

• Look for a thick paint, to avoid bleeding
• Some people recommend Speedball brand screen painting ink
• Use a sponge or a stiff brush to apply the paint
• Take care to apply the paint right into the weave of the fabric
• Take care with applying the paint into any details on your design, such as points

Drying the stencil

• Allow 4 - 6 hours for drying
• You might like to use a hair dryer to speed up the process
• If you don't allow enough time for the paint to dry, it may peel away with the paper

Setting the stencil

• For best results, be guided the manufacturers instructions on your fabric paint
• However ... here are some additional tips I have seen for setting the stencil:
  - cover the stencil with an old tea-towel, or other piece of fabric, and iron
  - cover the stencil with a new piece of freezer paper and iron
  - iron the stencil on its reverse side
  - tumble-dry on a low setting

I have decided to start out with a very simple design. I would like to make Argy and Bargy some Christmas t-shirts with trees on them. With my craft track record and only 98 days left, I don't have a moment to waste. (Don't laugh - remember the crochet?) Anyway, I thought I might stencil on the tree and then stitch on some decorations (will Mr HB notice sequins on his boys?). The sloth in me is pointing me toward downloading a design, but my conscience (knowing that long, long ago I used to be able to do some passable drawings) tells me not to be so lazy. Let's see which little inner voice wins.

So during this next week, I am going to:

1. Sketch my design
2. Trace it onto both the Reynolds and C. Jenkins freezer paper
3. Test run the stencils on some calico
4. If time permits, wash and dry the test stencils to check out their durability (wash durability is a very important factor over here at Hoppo Bumpo's House of Putrid Children)

I will be using the beautiful Speedball Opaque Screen Printing Ink in Black Pearl, that I picked up a couple of weeks ago at Riot Art and Craft. I'll let you know next time if (with my amateur eyes) I see any particular differences between the performance of the Reynolds and C. Jenkin's papers.

If you are stencilling along, how have you gone this week? Did you manage to find some freezer paper? (If you'd like other people to see what you're up to, leave a comment and I'll pop your name into the sidebar.)

A stencil along

(Download: freezer paper stencil tips PDF)

I'm a bit of a magpie: I simply can't resist shiny things.

I like a few sequins, a diamante or two and some rhinestones. I can gaze at twinkling Christmas decorations for hours. I have trouble walking past any fabric containing even a hint of lurex. I habour secret desires to wear inappropriately sparkly eye make-up. I once thought that puffy glitter fabric paint was a good idea.

So you see, the lure of shiny explains this latest acquisition. A pot of shimmering black pearl fabric ink. Its lustrous and beautiful. I had to have it. Another case of buy now; think later.

So I've finally come to the thinking part.

Following a brief interlude after the granny square crocheting, I can see another hapless craft experiment on the horizon: freezer paper stencilling.

If you haven't seen this before, it involves cutting out an image from the sheet of freezer paper, ironing the paper to your fabric and then stencilling. Et voila, a beautiful image! Or that's the theory.

I'm a bit excited about this one.

There are loads of lovely examples of freezer paper stencilling about (for example, look at this one over at Angry Chicken). It would be really fun to do some t-shirts for Argy and Bargy, especially as the materials aren't too expensive. And from what I understand, you can even print nifty initial images onto your freezer paper using an inkjet printer. Note to self: best check this out with Mr HB. We don't really need another printing fiasco like this.

All else aside, this particular project seems to meet one essential criteria: I think I actually understand the instructions. A complete turn-up for the books. In fact, I reckon I could knock out at least one half-way decent t-shirt in a month. And if it all goes pear-shaped, I can quietly sneak the freezer paper into the kitchen cupboard and pretend that it never happened. Excellent.

So, care to join in a Freezer Paper Stencil Along? Trust me, if you are time poor, this is for you. The bar is set low each week.

This week, my aims are to:

1. Find and read a few tutorials.
   On my list already are these good ones at Craftster and Unwind.
   
   
2. Get my hands on a roll of Reynolds Freezer Paper
   From the little reading that I have already done, it sounds like this US product is the stuff to use. It can be ordered at various places, such as quilting supply shops.
   
   
3. Launder a piece of fabric that I can do a test run on.
   I'll probably use calico, as I have metres of the stuff for sewing toiles.
   
   
4. Think about what kind of image I will use for my first test-run (hopefully, in a week's time)

A bit on how I've fared, next Thursday ...

Edit: This was Team Stencil. Check out their blogs for stencil inspiration!

3 Red Buttons
66 Stitches Bellgirl
Cloth and Fodder
CurlyPops
Ellieboo
Hoppo Bumpo
Potty Mouth Mama
Taccolina

Free patterns, tutorials and recipes

The links below are to various sewing and craft tutorials and recipes that I have posted here on my blog. I hope you find them useful. If you have any questions, you are more than welcome to contact me.

All my tutorials are licensed under a under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. To see what this means, look over here.


NEW Tutorial - "Hem along"
The hem-along is underway. Weeks 1 to 4 have been posted, covering double and single fold hems, hemming stretch fabrics and blind hemming by hand and machine. After a short break .... I will be covering rolled hems, faced hems, scalloped edges, Euro-hems, flared hems and more! (Re-commencing September 2009)


Tutorial - "Seam-along"
A 9 week series of posts covering various ways to sew and finish seams. Includes French seams, Hong Kong finishes, overlocking, falt fell, channel seams and more. Downloadable PDF available soon.



Tutorial - make a shower cap
A downloadable PDF pattern and instructions for sewing your own pretty shower cap. The shower cap has a bias binding trim and a nylon waterproof inner.


Tutorial - make a gadget wallet
A downloadable PDF pattern and instructions for sewing a soft carry case that will hold a gadget such as a small digital camera or a GPS.


Tutorial - make a fluffy teddy card (kiddy craft)
Downloadable stencil for creating this furry friend on a card.


Tutorial - make a gingerbread cottage
Hint and tips for creating your own gingerbread cottage from scratch. Includes details of patterns, baking and decoration. I am not able to cook with eggs for our family, so also includes details of making royal icing without egg whites. Available as downloadable PDF.


Tutorial - freezer paper stencilling
Hints and tips for creating a fabric printing stencil using freezer paper. Includes information about choice of paper, creating your stencil and inking and setting the design. Available as downloadable PDF.


3-by-3 kiddie canvas
This nine square picture canvas is a super easy project. The picture is designed to be either free-standing or hung. The squares are individual canvases padded with batting and fabric. The corner designs are appliqued and the child's photo is inkjet-printed to a special cotton fabric. The canvases are secured with a plastic backing and then again around the perimeter with ribbon. The tutorial includes designs suitable for a boy or girl.


Tutorial - create a stencil image from a photo using Microsoft Word
A workaround for those of us who don't have the fancy graphics software to help create stencils. Available as a downloadable PDF.


Tutorial - add special characters to your blog post
Add symbols and other characters not usually found on your computer keyboard to your blog post.


Stand-back-and-throw (simple) meal ideas
Don't get me wrong ... I do like to cook. But sometimes I just like things to be easy: to stand back and throw. Includes recipes for main meals and sweet treats. Do try the easy-peasy no-bake cheesecake!

More ...