First attempt at stencils

So I love making ‘things’ with my Glowforge, but even more so I have become enamored with using it to make the things I need to make things. As such I stumbled over some posts about stencils and have to say I love this project concept. Big shout out to Bay Stencil for the first stencil I worked with, that isn’t an affiliate or paid promotion or whatever, I just found their interface super simple and the digital download of a massive set of workable files was appreciated (though the new projects I am working on I am designing my own stencils from scratch, this was a great way to see if I liked the process without throwing hours at it to start).



This first test was super fun and something I was able to do with the kiddo to help him make a gift for his mom for mother’s day coming up. I made the stencils in cheap .125" underlayment because I had a mess of it laying about and its rigid enough that we got to do a handful of tries already while he picked the color combos he wanted and got “crafty” (He added white speckles to her hair to make it like a star field). If I remember I will post the final product after he is happy with it and I build him a frame (also on the GF for etched embellishments :slight_smile: ).

If you haven’t seen or tried this kind of project, I highly recommend. Super low barrier to entry for making them if you don’t feel like doing your own design (though I promise you will once you have done one) and all in all was a great little one day project.

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Nice.

If you get into stencils in a big way, mylar is generally the material of choice – it’s rigid and thin, so it avoids some of the issues you get with paint reaching the surface material with the 1/8" stencil material.

For some previous work, if you haven’t already seen it:

https://community.glowforge.com/search?q=mylar%20stencil

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What a great project and meaningful Mother’s Day gift!

Yes, I find this particularly satisfying as well.

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This turned out beautiful. I’ve done some with Mylar stencils but not layered like that!

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That layered art idea is amazing! So many ideas that i will probably never have time for. Save it for a rainy day i guess. Thanks for sharing and thunbs up on the stars in the hair!

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Very nice work!

I also like the sheets of blue painter’s tape.

Hmm as a stencil material? So what, you’d stick it to the honeycomb, cut it, lift it, stick it to your surface and then paint it?

Yes–I hold it to the metal tray with small magnets for cutting.

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