How To Cut A Stencil Tutorial

By Joshua

Lady gaga skullface makeup So ya wanna make a custom stencil eh? Well cutting stencils is generally pretty easy thing to do but the process can be labor intensive depending on the complexity of the design and the tools and material that you are using. If you follow this tutorial you will likely find the entire process much easier.

For this tutorial I am going to cut the Bruce Lee out for a t-shirt design. T-shirts designs are generally 8.5 inches high by 11 inches across and that size works for most shirt sizes wit the exception of very small sized shirts like for babies and small kids.

The first step is to print Bruce Lee on a computer in simple black and white. If you know how to use Adobe Photoshop, then save yourself some ink by making an outline to print rather than printing off a full black image like below. In Photoshop, what you want to do is select outline of the art, not the entire sheet, then make a new layer, and on the new layer with the outline, stroke 2 pixels in order to make an outline, hide the original image and what you should be left with is an outline of the image below. Print it out, saving yourself ink, and now you should have an outline image that is ready to use .

Next you need tools and material:

Printout of image.
Exacto knife with new blades.
Transparent or semi-opaque mylar or acetate that is .003 Mils thick is good.
Table to work on and chair to sit on.
Good lighting.
Cutting board to cut the stencil onto.

Use a solid table because you will be pressing down on the material. Place a cutting board on the table but make sure that it does no move around and slip too easily. You may want to tape the cutting board down just in case. Then, tape the stencil of Bruce Lee onto the back of the mylar or acetate stencil sheet and flip the mylar over so that the mylar is on the top facing you and underneath is the image showing through the mylar. Opaque materials such as carton or cardoard or construction paper can be used too but since they are opaque and you won’t be able to see the image that you are cutting out through the material, you have to place the image on top of the stencil material and cut through it. Another alternative is clear paper covers like the kind you use in binders to put on your school reports. The tape that you should use should not be too sticky and I recommend low-tack masking tape which is also known as painters tape.

Tape the paper to the stencil and make sure that it’s very secure and once you’ve taped the paper to the stencil sheet then using the sharp end of the blade, start at the top left of the stencil (for right hander’s). Cut directly on the stencil line. When cutting your free hand should always be above the cutting blade so you will not accidently cut yourself. Cutting this stencil would take me about 20 to 30 minutes so allow yourself and hour at least. The hardest part will be cutting the hand and it’s jagged, stipply edges.

It is very important to note that you have to avoid the phenomenon of cutting whats is known as a circle within a circle because without any type of bridge holding the inner circle, the entire circle will be cut out. Take Bruce’s mouth for instance, once you cut out around the mouth it will also take Bruce’s teeth out too making him look funny and so some sort of bridge must be left in place to hold the teeth. You must leave connecting bridges that are not too thin and fragile and floppy or you will get a circle within a circle. There is a real art to cutting stencils and especially to cutting good stencils that will last many reuses over time.

After you’ve cut out the stencil un-tape it and remove the paper and pop out any stencil pieces and you now have your very own reusable custom stencil. One of the best additional items to have for using stencils is low-tack, are positionable spray adhesive that you can buy this at your local crafts store, I prefer 3M’s black can.

###END###