December StencilClub: Make a Printing Plate!

Hi, this is Gwen here today to share with you a fun technique and a project using the new, exclusive! December StencilClub stencils. I have to say, when I opened up this month's envelope, there might have been a small squeal of happiness. Just a little one... lol. I love this month's designs (as always, of course!) and immediately had an idea of what I wanted to try with them.

This month I used foam sheets to create a monoprinting plate from my stencils (I used 9x12 sheets of Inovart Presto Foam Printing Plates - I got a 12-pack at Blick for pretty cheap.) You can also use a piece of clean styrofoam from a take-out container, fun foam / craft foam (although you have to push harder,) or something similar. I love this technique because you can create kind of a block-print look from your stencils.

To start, all you have to do is lay your stencil over top and get a stylus (or a ball point pen, or whatever is handy) and start tracing your design into the foam. You don't have to apply much pressure, but you want to make sure your lines are clean and visible.

Ahem... you may have caught my boo boo. And if you did, you beat me to it! This is a do as I say and not as I do moment... if your stencil has letters, numbers, or words, flip it over before you do this part. See step 4 as proof. I was having so much fun tracing, I ended up with a total "duh" moment later on. Oh well, I doubt I'll forget again any time soon!

Carrying on... you can leave it as is, or you can add the next step. I took my 4x4 and 6x6 stencils and, with the large stencil still in place, layered them over top and traced designs into some of the letters and numbers on my plate. Hopefully you can see below what I mean:

Voila! A (backwards) printing plate! You can see all the extra detail you get by layering your stencils.

Next for the fun part - paint it! I put dabs of different paints on and spread them with my brayer.

You can use these printing plates like you would a gelli plate. (Just keep in mind you'll need to work a bit faster since the styrofoam will absorb some of the paint where a gelli plate will not.) Get the paint on them and start pulling prints!

Just hopefully not backwards prints like mine. I thought about redoing it and pretending this never happened, but decided that since I was going to be using it for background elements, it didn't bother me. And bonus, if I decide I don't want to make more prints with it (or the paint builds up too much) I can use the plate in something else. And the letters will be facing the right way. So then I can say I meant to do that ;)

I pulled a few prints from my plate and then switched to an art journal page. I put down some paint as a background and let it dry, then used contrasting colors on my plate and printed directly into my art journal.

Look at all that great texture from the layered stencils! So fun.

From here I added a few more layers, starting with torn pieces of book paper that I'd printed on, and then I used paint to stencil some letters and numbers from the 9x12 stencil that I wanted to use to start words and sentences in my journaling.

Next I added some white paint through the 6x6 stencil and some detailing with a black Stabilo All Marks pencil.

Once it was all dry, I used a Fude Ball pen to write my journaling on top. And that's it! A finished art journal page and a new printing plate that I can use over and over.

I hope you enjoyed today's post, and that you're excited and inspired for when your stencils come in the mail! If you're not a member of StencilClub yet, you can sign up by the 15th and still get these stencils to start your membership.

Thanks for stopping by!

Gwen Lafleur