Stenciling technique - home decoration idea

I have learnt the stenciling technique when I was in secondary school. My art teacher taught us this technic, we used pastel and finger to achieve soft effect. I appreciated a lot her teaching, because today I applied this technique again, but on a wall, not only on a paper!

I have helped out my lovely friend to decorate the church, thanks so much for her trust. ( I love her so much >v< ) She always has good idea ;) We are always the best team, ever!

For more explanation on Stenciling technique, click here.

Basically it is to have a piece of plastic or thick paper, draw your design on it. Then cut the empty space out (spaces between lines) and color the empty part.

Here are the steps how I stencil the words on the wall:

1. In "Word" document, type in the words that you want to print out, choose the font and size that you like
Note: You may find that not all the words fit on the same page because the word is too long, that is ok. Leave them on separate pages, you can later cut out the alphabets and put them together to form a word.

2. Print out the document

3. Cut out ONLY the letters with a sharp cutter, put your cutting matt underneath, don't damage your table - you won't need these letters
You will now have a piece of paper with holes (these should be alphabets)

Note 1: It is better to put one word on the same paper - but in step 1 if you have one long word separated into few pages, now you need to use scotch/tape to stick them together
Be careful of the spacing! You can use your finger to measure, like the spacing of 1 finger or 2 fingers

Note 2: You may have a question - for the alphabets like "a", "o", "b", "d" etc, you want to keep the space in the middle not painted. What to do? 

See the above picture imagine it is the alphabet "o", you see there is an opening called "Bridge", because the non painted part connects the round shape in the middle called "Island". It is like a joint
If you accidentally cut the whole thing off (that is what I did too), don't panic, use scotch to fix the problem!

4. Now draw a straight line on the wall with your pencil, at least for the 1st row! To ensure the words are stenciled nicely!

Then you can stick these papers on the wall & paint the words. 
As you see in the photo the words are on several lines, the order to work on it: from the top to the bottom

5. With the line of the 1st row drawn on the wall, you can put the paper of the 2nd row just under this line to ensure the 2nd row is straight, then paint it.
Also the advantage is to have the equal spacing between rows!

Then, DO NOT remove the paper! I know you are getting excited... Me too! But keep calm! Keep them on the wall, put the paper of 2nd row, then you can remove the paper of the 1st line or you can keep them

6. Now come to the 3rd row, do the same, do not remove the paper of the 2nd row, stick the paper of 3rd row right under the paper of 2nd row. Then, you can paint it

7. If you have several lines, repeat step 6

Note: I didn't draw any line on the wall... because the paper on the 1st row just touch the border.

8. When the paint is dried, erase the pencil mark

DONE!

Enjoy!

Craft sale at church

Finally I got the photos from the craft sale at my church on 15-Dec :)

We had a small scale of craft sale for people to buy last minute christmas gift to friends and family. All the funds are going to the general church fund.

Last year 2012 we had our first bake sale during christmas time, it was successful! This year 2013 we had few bake sales they are all good, that reflected people like cakes and sweet stuffs.

Here is the photo of our bake sale in June 2013. Yummy :)









So.... This time I was thinking better to change the sale product type, so craft comes to my mind... I'm glad that I am the one who organize it, because there are many things to learn :) I think I will make some improvement next time!

Thank God that my sister at church is taking cartonnage class, she taught me how to make bloc telephone (see my 1st post). People like it and they even ordered some!

We also have other cartonnage stuffs like mirrors, porte-crayons, letter carriers...

On my side, I made some crochet teddy bears, crochet bookmarks :)



The week after the craft sale was crazy, since we had some orders... but we were happy because people buy what they like and at the same time they are giving money to the church :)

What I need to improve - make more stuffs in stock in advance little by little now, so that I will have larger quantity to sell next time.