OK, so here is where I learned how to do this, and also where I got the acid and other materials that I’ve made things with; it’s a great site & a great tutorial! Actually, just one of many tutorials that they have…
But it is based on what I will call “the old way”, of using transfer paper, that you would have to print out in reverse (on a laser printer, btw; an inkjet printer is useless for that), and then iron it on to your material.
That crucial step was hit and miss; the print didn’t always stick well, and once you peeled it off & saw that it didn’t transfer well…um, let’s just say “good luck in trying to fix it!”; you really needed to do it all over again.
Using the GF, I was able to cut the stencil right onto the material, using blue tape (any masking tape will do), and that is sooooooo much easier. Paint creep is always a problem I have, but I will be more diligent in the future & press the tape down harder!
OK, here’s the step by step:
Covered the plate with tape:
Cut the design; settings were 10% power, 100 speed:
Started using a sharpie, but it was old & crappy…so I got lazy and switched to spray paint:
Which worked pretty well, except for 4 things to keep in mind:
- Took waaayyy too long to dry; sharpie is instant, paint took overnight
- It bled under the tape in a few spots
- Stuck to the tape in a few spots and peeled away with it, requiring a couple of touch-ups with the sharpie
- Requires a much more rigorous removal effort with steel wool, compared to a sharpie
You can see the spots that I had to manually clean off where it bled, as well as touch up because it peeled off. These steps would not have been necessary if I had just gone and used a new marker, lol:
Added a border with a new (brown) sharpie:
The acid:
Taped the back fully, and had drawn on all the edges with a sharpie, to keep those areas protected:
Let’s take a 3 hour bath, shall we?! 
This is what it looks like when it first comes out of the bath (and baking soda for neutralizing) 
But after some tender loving care with a steel wool pad, we get this:
Hope you guys like it! This is my biggest thank you to the community (especially all who have helped me in so many other areas), the staff at GF, and all the other customers…
