Stenciling a Three Panel Screen

In order to hide the backs of a num­ber of mon­i­tors and com­put­ers in Jim’s office we put up a cheap three pan­el screen.

It’s very bor­ing thing. But… the pan­els are white “can­vas” and that means they don’t have to stay bor­ing. So I final­ly found a sten­cil that I want­ed to use in a new book “Sten­cil Me In”

The birds on the right — crows! The orig­i­nal is only 8 inch­es tall and the screens are 60 inch­es — fill­ing them up with crows would be very busy. So… time to make the lit­tle crows into big crows. I have a scan­ner and Pho­to­shop and a print­er, and a lot of tape. And they are — 18 inch­es tall now.

Next to make a sten­cil. I used an old mani­la file fold­er. (You can still see the label if you look close­ly.) By tap­ing the enlarged sten­cil pat­tern over the top and cut­ting very care­ful­ly with an exac­to knife — two fresh blades — I end­ed up with a decent stencil.

Then I got out the lin­seed oil and rubbed it into the paper. It takes along time to cov­er the fold­er even­ly. Not too much (that would be gloopy) and not too lit­tle (that would be splotchy.) It took 24 hours for the sten­cil to dry enough that it would­n’t bleed oil on the fabric.

Next up — the actu­al apply­ing of paint!