Stencils: Using a Leaf Stencil Template

Video Transcript

" Hi this is Brenda and we are continuing with our stenciling project. Now let’s say for instance that we want to make our own stencil. You can use a piece of plastic overlay such as this and we have something underneath to protect our surface when we can begin to cut with our Exacto knife, box cutter or scissors. So once our table is completely covered like this and protected, then we can begin. I’m taking my Sharpie and I am going to just freehand just draw a leaf pattern such as this. Now if you are not real artistic and you just really don’t feel comfortable drawing your patterns, you can look in a child’s coloring book or some other type of book and get something that you would like to trace and that is fine to make your pattern if you don’t really feel comfortable doing it like I just did freehand. I brought my little pattern here and I am going to take this knife and it takes a while of course since this is plastic and it takes a while to go through it. Like I said earlier you can use an Exacto knife. Please do be careful because this is very sharp and it can cut your hand so you have to be very careful. This is of course is not a project for children to do. You could of course cut the stencil out for them and let them paint later but this is definitely not something for a child to do because this knife is so sharp. What I am doing is keep going over and over and over the pattern that I have drawn out with a Sharpie. This is why it is very good to have a protected surface underneath because this would mar your table. We just keep going over and over just like this. I believe that has just about done it so we will begin to pull this like this and there we have our template. "