Making my own stencils with my new Portrait

I love stencils. There are so many beautiful ones out there and I have bought my share of them. But lately I’ve been wanting to use stencils that I created. A while back I cut two out with my soldering tool. That was fun, but I wanted more intricate stencils like this one I just made.

I have been looking at cutters for a long time, but couldn’t justify the cost since I don’t scrapbook much anymore. These machines looked like so much fun, but how could I use it in my art? This is where Lisa Chin over at Something About Nothing sold me on this new gadget. On her blog she created a stencil from a photo with her Silhouette Portrait. That is exactly what I had in mind – making stencils from my pictures!

The Portrait is a small machine compared to the popular Cameo, but with the smaller size came a smaller, more in my budget, price tag. After hours of online research, I took the plunge and ordered it.

Since I was interested in making stencils I quickly looked for a photo to work with. I found my favorite picture of my marbling water.

After isolating the bottom left flower in Photoshop Elements, I duplicated it twice, saved it as a PNG file, and imported into the Silhouette software to make a stencil.

Even though my Portrait came with vinyl, it wasn’t the kind I wanted to use for a stencil on fabric so I stopped by Blick’s and purchased Grafix Dura-Lar. It worked great, although I would like the material to be a little bit heavier.

That is so cool! It’s amazing how this little machine can make such intricate cuts.

I grabbed several pieces of my dyed fabric and stenciled with Metallic Copper Lumiere.

I can think of so many pictures I’d like to turn into stencils to use on my fabric and on paper. Talking about an obsession! Wow!