lino prints and stencil prints

In the last 2 weeks, in the fabric printing community class I teach, the students have been making lino prints...

and stencil prints...

Christmas Cactus stencil print

I made a stencilled card for my Dad's birthday...

First I took a photo of a Christmas Cactus plant I have, then I printed the photo and traced the shapes of the leaves and flowers. I coloured in selected areas of the traced design:

Then I traced the areas that I would stencil in different colours, as separate layers, and cut them out of card with a craft knife:

Then I stencilled the design onto a blank card using a brush and acrylic paints:

I stencilled the 'soil' by cutting out that area and drawing in there with a black coloured pencil, as opposed to paint, to add some texture to the picture.

A Christmassy-New Year-Birthday print!

You can make a stencilled picture with your own design by following those steps.

stencilled tote bag

I made a hand-stencilled tote bag yesterday, as a demo for my first Handmade Crafts class, which starts tomorrow evening in Forest Hill.  Here's how I made it...

I wanted to use the bag for carrying books, so I made some sketches about books and butterflies, which I used for the design.  I drew the butterfly/books on a piece of A4 card and cut out the shapes using a craft knife.  Then I sprayed a little glue on the back of the card and stuck it onto the blank bag.





I put some fabric paints out on a piece of acetate (a paper plate would be fine) and used pieces of sponge to stencil the design through the cut out shapes in the card.  It's better to dab the paint on gently and repeat the application, rather than blobbing lots of paint on, as the paint could get under the stencil and spoil your design.  When I had finished applying the different colours that I chose, I peeled the stencil off.

Then I sprayed some more glue onto the back of the stencil and stuck it onto the bag again, as I wanted to repeat some of the butterfly-books and fill in the bottom corners of the bag.  I got a bit of paint under the stencil by accident this time, but it can be fixed afterwards with a paintbrush.

When I'd finished (both sides) and the paint was dry, I ironed the bag on the reverse, to fix the fabric paint and make it washable.  Here's the finished bag again:

                                    

t-shirt workshop

I taught a t-shirt printing workshop on Saturday at the Ackroyd Centre, Forest Hill.

Eight children attended the workshop and printed t-shirts either with their own design or using pre-cut stencils from Ed Roth's book 'Stencil 101'.

The workshop went well - I was very impressed by the participants' designs and their quick grasp of how to do stencilling.

It was an enjoyable morning! 

t-shirt printing workshop

I will be teaching a t-shirt printing workshop for 8-15 year olds in Forest Hill, London, on August 4th.

I stencilled a couple of images to make a flyer for the workshop...

The first image was a pre-cut stencil from the book "Stencil 101" by Ed Roth.  It's a great book with lots of cool images ready-made (and cut out) for you to use immediately.

 
The second stencil was one that I designed and cut out of card.

This image was made using 3 stencils - one for the cloud, one for the raindrops (simply because the card wasn't big enough to fit the cloud and raindrops on), and a separate one for the eyes and mouth (because it's a different colour).

I used some repositionable spray glue to stick the stencils to the fabric, then fabric paint and a sponge to stencil them.

In the workshop on August 4th, participants will also print one t-shirt with a pre-cut stencil from the book "Stencil 101", then will make and print their own design on a second t-shirt.

Feel free to email me at: cathelinor@gmail.com if you have any questions about the workshop.

Camellia card

 

I made this stencilled Camellia print as a card for Mother's Day recently.  This was my process...

 

I photographed then sketched a Camellia plant which was blooming in the garden of our house.

 

I separated my sketch into 4 layers, by choosing the parts I would print in different colours.  Then I traced each layer onto some stencil card and cut out the shapes with a craft knife.

I stencilled each layer onto card, using a sponge and some fabric inks (produced a bit of a blobby effect, rather than using drier paint, e.g. acrylic, and a brush, but I had some nice colours already mixed in the fabric inks, and didn't mind the slightly blurry outcome).

Here are the printed cards (not yet folded) drying on a clothes horse...

...and here's the card I sent my Mum: