Making a stencil out of painter’s tape.

Hi! My name is Brooke, and this is a room I created! It was really fun to do things the “THRIFTY” way and spend hardly ANYTHING to make the room cute. That’s just how I roll. 🙂 To make things simple, I’ll just start with a “ART” I made for the wall!


After a few days of contemplation, I decided to create an art piece myself. Of course this is almost always the conclusion I come to in a situation like this. IT’S WAY cheaper…and usually CUTER if you do things yourself.

So, I took 2 blank white canvas art boards (that I bought at the local craft store for $7.00 each) and went to work.

FIRST…I found a pattern that I loved, and wanted to use. In this case, it was the fabric I had already obtained on clearance at Pottery Barn. (The black and white pattern that I used to make the window valence and also placed at the bottom of the bed.)

I laid the fabric on my counter and placed a piece of wax paper over the fabric. I then traced out the pattern with a sharpie marker.

Then I covered the opposite side of the wax paper with a painters tape. As you can see by the picture, I basically covered the entire piece of wax paper.

Next, I carefully cut out the painters tape to create the pattern. I ended up using both the negative space and the positive space as the stencil. I laid them out on the canvas to make sure they looked good, and fit well.

I then took off the wax paper (carefully :)) and put them on the canvas.

This part is VERY important. Don’t put too much paint on your brush, and be extra careful about the edges of the tape. I still ended up touching up around them in a few spots.

Here is the finished product! What a success! Don’t you think!?!?

TOTAL COST: $14.00 for the canvas + a smidgen for painters tape and craft paint EQUALS….”THRIFTY!!!!!”

Here is the finished result!

Published on July 30, 2009

25 thoughts on “Making a stencil out of painter’s tape.”

  3. Oh my gosh, I am totally doing that! I LOVE it! And I can't wait to see your house, I am already in love with that room (Oaklyn's room?) and the way you painted your master bedroom!

    Reply

  9. You can also put your design behind your canvas and hold it up to a window to trace it 🙂 It works rather well but takes longer to paint. Of course… it takes less time to set up so I guess that's the trade off.

    Love your new art!

    Reply

  10. This is awesome piece of art at a thrifty price, too…I love your creativity..stumbled here through Someday Crafts..and I'm very thankful I did, as I'm in love with your blog…thanx a lot for sharing this, I love it!!

    Reply

  20. Thanks so much for this. I just used your technique to put some branches and a bird on some cabinets I'm painting and it worked wonderfully. So easy and made entirely with things I already had. I will definitely be doing this again.

    Reply

  21. Thanks for posting this! I was looking for a way to cut out detailed stencils to paint designs on a skateboard, and the tutorial I found was for taping the skateboard and then cutting the stencil directly on the skateboard, but I did not like the idea of cutting directly on the wood, so I think this idea will work great.

    Reply

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