How to Make a Decorating Stencil

Featured Pro: Carter Oosterhouse
Category: Home Décor
Time: 4:41


CARTER OOSTERHOUSE: Hey, I’m Carter Oosterhouse with your next GMC Trade Secret, brought to you by the GMC Acadia.

Now, stencils are easy to make and they’re so versatile. You can almost decorate anything using a stencil. Now, what you make your stencil from depends on what you’re going to be using it for and how many times you really want to use it down the road. If you’re only using it once, you can make your stencil from a piece of card stock if you wanted to. But if you need to use it over and over again, I recommend using something that’s a little bit more durable, like this vellum that I have here.

Now, the first step you want to do is simply select an image. Now, I chose this branch. I put it onto a piece of paper. I blew up the image. I want to put that image onto this pillow case. So what I first want to do is place this image underneath the vellum and transfer it onto the vellum using a pencil.

Now, once I put the vellum over the image, I’m simply going to tape all four corners down, so that way the vellum doesn’t move over time. And now I simply use a pencil and transfer the image. So you can see there’s a lot of detail on this branch, a lot of little limbs too. So it’s going to take me a little while. But when you’re doing it, you want to make sure that you have a nice, smooth free hand.

And don’t worry about too much of the detail when you’re tracing the image. What you do want to make sure – and this is a stencil that I started with, and it has these breaks in between all of the branches. So that way, when I cut the image out, it’s not going to fall apart. So make sure you prep it first.

All right. So now I have my pattern completely cut out on my vellum. You’re going to see it’s holding up nice and neat. And now what I want to do is transfer this pattern onto my pillow case. So what I’ve done here is I’ve put a little piece of cardboard in the pillow case. So that way, when I put the paint on, it doesn’t seep through to the other side. So I’m going to make sure that my pattern is facing the right way. And then, just like we did before, we want to make sure that it doesn’t move at all once it’s on here, because once we start painting, we don’t want any smears or smudges. So I’ll make sure I tape everything down pretty much all the way around it. Okay, just make sure it’s not going to move and there’s not any air pockets in here.

All right, so the next thing I want to do is put on some paint. Now, I chose pretty much a bright-color paint. I like the contrast between something organic and natural, like a branch, and a really light-colored paint. So that shows red. I’m simply going to put it on my painter’s tray here. And there’s different ways you can apply it too. You can use little stipple brushes like this. You can use an artist’s brush. You can even use sponges. I’m going to use these little stipple brushes. I’m going to make sure that my paint is all mixed up, and simply dab it onto the pillow case.

All right. That looks pretty good. Now let’s carefully take our vellum off, so that way we don’t spill any paint onto the pillow case, and see how it looks.

All right, look at that. It’s already dry. Perfect.

Now let’s take a look at one other example of a stencil pattern. So now I’m just putting a stencil onto this platter, and basically the same principles apply as I used on the pillow case over there. So you just want to make sure that if you’re putting it on a platter or something where food could be close, you want to use this ceramic paint or paint that’s appropriate for a platter. And it has to be baked afterwards as well. Look at that – brought new life to an old platter.

Now, you can use stencil on pretty much anything. You can finish old furniture, an old dresser, or even add a pattern onto a wall using spray paint or even stains, whatever it is. You name it.

I’m Carter Oosterhouse, and this is another GMC Trade Secret.