Episode: 2253
Title: HPR2253: How to make and use a stencil
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2253/hpr2253.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 00:24:02

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This in HPR episode 2,253 entitled How to Make a New Suspensal.
It is posted by first time post at IdaBian and is about 14 minutes long, and Karima next
visit flag.
The summary is cutting and using a stencil made on thick foil.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15 that's HPR15.
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Hello, this is Spina or Ainibina in the social networks and this is my first episode
of Hacker Public Radio and it's also my first podcast ever.
So I hope you'll be patient with me and I hope this works out, I'm just gonna try.
I want to talk about making a stencil and using a stencil, first I want to talk about
the materials and then later I tell you what I did to make my stencil.
You need if you want to make the stencil you need a motif for it and you need something
where you want to cut it in like a thick foil or a cardboard or a metal sheet and you
need something sharp to cut it with like a sharp knife or a scalpel, a scalpel, a scalpel.
I don't know how you pronounce that, a surgeon's knife.
Yeah, that's the three things you need to make it and if you want to use it you need your
stencil, you need a tape to fix it on a surface and of course you need a surface to put it on
and you need paint and if you want to apply the paint you need a sponge or you can also do it
with a spray can. About the motif you can make your own motif if you want to do that, like
get your own design, what's very important is that all the parts are connected, like if you put
for example a smiley face, you have the eyes in the middle and you have your mouth but when you
cut the circle of the face the eyes and the mouth will fall off so it needs to be connected to
everything else so it will actually work out. And if you don't make it yourself I didn't in this
case and you can get one on the internet, for example you can just put stencil in the search
engine and you find a lot of things and there's some free motifs out there like political art or
some kind of symbols but there's also motifs you can buy that's a lot of interior design stuff
like leaves and flowers and you can get fancy stuff like tigers or anything really and it
happens you can buy it in a shop too I was surprised to find a really nice stencil in my local
food store but I bought that but you can also find them in art supply stores or interior design
departments in big stores and there's a little bit around and then you if you have the motive
you have to eat something to cut it out of and if you take cardboard you can use a carpet knife
for example and if you use a thick foil and that's what I did or a plastic sheet you can use a
scalpel and if you do the like if you're actually getting something then you can try to find something
with round edges because if the edges are very straight it's really hard to cut out curves or
curvy lines so it would make it a lot easier if the edges are round and you can also use a metal
sheet and I don't have a clue how you cut that you probably need some industrial strength stuff
there I wouldn't know I didn't do it with metal but I saw a video of someone cut making a
stencil and it was all fancy he used all sorts of adhesive spray to get his motive fixed on
the surfaces and it looked really impressive and professional and fancy and it also looked like
you have to buy a ton of equipment for it and it would be really expensive if I didn't do that
I went kind of cheap but if you want to get into it maybe look for videos I don't know about
the fancy stuff here and when you want to use the the the stencil you can use it on all sorts
of surfaces for example you can use a wall you can put it on a wall or you can put it on paper
or you can make like gift wraps out of it or you can put it on a planter or that's what that's
what I did too or you can put it on furniture or you can put it on fabric like like jeans or something
and you also need tape to fix your stencil on the surface it's important that it doesn't
like slide around and smear everything so it has to be fixed and you can choose a tape according
to the surfaces you use what's important is it should fix fix it properly the stencil on the
surface but also it shouldn't destroy either and if you have a very strong tape it could destroy
the the surfaces and it should be easy enough to pull off later like when the paint is on
and you want to take the stencil off it should come off easy enough so you don't smear everything
over either so you have yeah I have to find the right kind of tape and the paint is also
depending on the surface you use like you can all you can use all sorts of acrylic paint
or if you if you use it on fabric they're special fabric paint and I guess you you can do it with
with everything that's fluid pretty much and to apply the paint you will you can use a spray can
you can do that too it's probably the easiest but you can also just use a sponge I use a
simple kitchen sponge I cut it up in smaller pieces and I just used a sponge
and you can also use I don't know if it's still available really that much and there's that
packing form the yellow form and that's yeah used for wine bottles or something packing wine bottles
you can use that too but I don't know if that's still around I haven't seen any of that in a long time
I think yeah but oh you can just cut up a kitchen sponge and I the way I made my stencil is I
first I decided on a motif I found a motif on the internet for free and it's from the food not
bombs movement and it's a fist holding a carrot I really like the motif and yeah I got that
and then I used some overhead foil like they they were used for overhead projections in school
in schools and yeah I don't know if they're still used overhead projectors I don't know
but they were when I was young but you can still get the foil you can you can just order it online
and but you have to be very careful with it to you have to get the right one you can use it in
a printer but you have to get the right foil for either a laser printer or an inkjet printer if
you use the wrong foil for the printer it will kill your printer that's not a good idea
so you can just be very careful in choosing the right foil if you're ordering a packet of foil
but you can also like in copy shops they sell single sheets of that foil and that's what I did
I just went into a copy shop and got a piece of foil and copied my motif on the foil
and then you have your black and a black motif as a black on see-through motif
and then you have to start cutting and it's best to take a newspaper or something so you won't
cut up the surface of your desk and I used a newspaper or you can use something else
and then you start cutting it and then you go on cutting it and then you still go on cutting it
because it's pretty a pretty slow procedure and you have to be very very careful because if you
make a mistake you can grab the whole thing and it's not a good idea to make mistakes so it takes
forever and forever and forever to cut these tiny pieces out of there and then you get hand cramps
well it was a pain in the behind cutting that stuff out and I was very happy when I was finished
but if you're finished if you make it you have a sensor oh yeah and then I had my sensor
on overhead foil as you cut out the black parts and you go along the edges of the black parts and
the black parts go off and the see-through parts stay on and the see then then it will be a
stencil and all the black parts are gone and I I wanted to use it on fabric and before I
use it I tried I did some tests on paper like I put my stencil on a piece of paper and got
my spoon and my color I for the test I use a simple acrylic paint and it's the best not to dip
the sponge in the paint but putting a little paint on a newspaper and then taking it from there
it takes a little while to find out how much paint you need so it will work out and not
not flow apart or smear smear smear smear I think it's smear you don't smear the color
yeah so you use a newspaper to dip the color with the sponge on the stencil you dip around the
or the empty parts the holes you fill all the holes with colors and when you're done with that
you have to take the stencil off again so for my tests I didn't didn't use the tape I just
did it like that and it worked out pretty good but when I when I then I went on to put it on
fabric and then I used the tape because it's really easy for a foil to slide on a fabric
and yeah I fix it I use some kind of yeah I don't even know what kind of tape it is it was black
and it was a bit similar to what's it called
I don't know the silver one similar like it was a strong tape but it was easy to take off later
but it held on on good and yeah I taped it on and I took out my my color for special color for
fabric and yeah filled all the holes with color and then I took my stencil off and now I have a
really really nice motive I have my carrot I have my carrot on fabric now and with a with a fabric
color it needs to dry first and then you have to iron it five minutes which is pretty long but
then the color will last through washing yeah so I think that's it I hope I haven't forgotten
anything and yeah in case you try it good luck with that and it's it's real fun it's really
cool to have stenciled stuff so go ahead try it thank you for listening
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