Reasons for Pre-Printed Backgrounds for Stencil Printing

Why do I like using pre-printed papers -- foreign newspapers, old maps, old encyclopedia pages -- for making my stencil prints?

Whether I'm preparing backgrounds for art-journal pages, developing scrapbooking projects, or creating greeting cards, I think that:

(1) Pre-printed backgrounds offer bonus visual appeal because some original areas of the background will remain visible, altho veiled, in the finished art.

(2) If I want to cut out the stenciled image, these pre-printed lines of text give me handy guidelines, so I can make straight (or nearly straight) cuts.  (If working on a collage on a large canvas, I may not want straight-line cuts.  But I like having this option.)  

In the print below, it's easy to see that I used lines of Chinese characters as my guidelines for keeping my image straight while I made the print.  This print was made with Hot Air Balloon Mask and Mini.  (This is one of my two hot air balloon stencil-and-mask sets.  These sets are identical except for size.) 

In making the print below, I used my 9" x 12" stencil Facets -- and a page from an old book of sheet music --

Below, with my 4" x 4" stencil Fern Fronds Silhouette Mini, I gave new life to part of an old map ....

Mikki's Flowers, a 6" x 6" stencil, came in handy when I wanted to make the greeting card below.  Its background is a paint-tinted page from an old encyclopedia; the original page featured a flower illustration, so I felt it was a good match.

(Mikki's Flowers Mask is also 6" x 6".  Its design is identical with the stencil featured above.)

Webbed Medallion, another 6" x 6" stencil, ended up being used like a rubber stamp -- but that was step 2 in a 2-part printing session.

Step 1:  Using an old nautical map (garage sale purchase) as my substrate, I laid down my 6" x 6" stencil Webbed Medallion, then went over it with a sponge roller loaded with heavy body acrylic paint --

Above:  an example of rolling a sponge brayer across heavy body acrylic paint to collect a generous load of paint.

-- with the result below --

After I'd made the above print, the brayer was still heavily loaded with paint.  

So -- Step 2 -- I quickly lifted the stencil, flipped it over, and pressed it to another area on the substrate.  Below is the print that resulted.

One application of paint; two very different results ... with pre-printed backgrounds to make every image more interesting!

Thanks for visiting my blog today!

To scroll thru my StencilGirl stencils, please start here.