Stencil Terminology

Stencil technique in visual art is referred to as pochoir, e.g. Banksy.  When a paper-cut, stencil-like image is the artwork itself, it's known as scherenschnitte (scizzor-cut).  It's kirigami (paper-cut) when the cutwork is symmetrical, as in a paper snowflake. (Although I've seen asymmetrical kirigami.) Cutwork is usually used for the effect on fabrics, I've seen the term applied to jewelry also.  Openwork is a term I've seen used for jewelry and crochet. I have been using cutwork mesh up to this point for my work.  But the 3D animation folks are also using mesh. To be honest, right now I don't know what I should call my work.

When I design a cutwork mesh the challenge is to make the bridges the right size.  If the mesh is to do a job like hold a bar of soap, it has to have robust enough bridges, while still letting in lots of air so that the soap can dry out well.  If I design at one scale and then try to shrink the design, the bridges shrink, too, so I have to keep aware of what's happening. I make a test cut and see which bridges are problematic, then adjust the elements accordingly in Illustrator to make bigger bridges, or smaller holes. 2 mm or about 1/16" is about as small as I want a bridge to be.

I don't just design on Adobe Illustrator, sometimes I use TouchDraw on the iPad to design meshes. With TouchDraw, I mail the drawing file as a pdf which I can email to my main computer put it on a thumb drive and take it via sneakernet to my other PC which has Illustrator on it.  From Illustrator I export an SVG file which is the file format for Sure Cuts A Lot.  Sometimes I sing the Madelina Catelina song and juggle a few oranges while I'm at it.

Billboard Vinyl for Making Stencils

One potential client from Etsy was wanting a custom stencil. So I have been exploring the possibilities of using recycled billboard vinyl for this purpose. Billboard vinyl has internal fibers that do not always get cut by the Cricut Expressions. I experimented with multi cuts as well, but the fibers seem to persist. I also learned that big loops require joins or bridges or whatever the term is for stencilling. Otherwise the large loops will shift during stencilling and produce an unsatisfactory result.

The making of the stencil required a doubling/displacement/combining/anchor-point-deletion of the words "Love" and "loved" because some parts of the letters were too thin at that scale to cut well. The Arial fonts required joins or bridges on letters like "e" and "a" and "g" because they had internal space within their letters and they needed solid material to anchor those central holes.

I think that a larger design with not too many fine cuts would work well for making stencils, and I'm definately going to use it myself for my own stencilling.

Custom wallets on Etsy

I was thinking of offering custom wallets for sale on Etsy. Here's one of the popular names on Etsy according to the demographics, with a Mid Century Modern font and a nice graphic that celebrates the name. I could do this either by printing the design on fabric then waterproofing the fabric, or by using billboard vinyl and a stencil cutting technique.

Accordian player from Entertainment 1 font by Helen Duggan. Text font is Fontdinerdotcom Sparkly.

Giveaway for the EtsyTrashion show

This is the cardholder wallet I've made for a giveaway for the EtsyTrashion Street Team's trunk show on November 28, 19:00 EST in the virtual labs at Etsy.com. It is the first time I have worked with twill tape as an edge binding. I notice that the ubiquitous Lululemon bags have twill tape edges.

Come to the trunk show for a chance to win this card wallet! It holds 6 credit cards or a bunch of business cards.

I am digging Mid Century Modern design these days, even though I lived through it the first time around. I made a stencil. Got to buy some stencil adhesive to get rid of the overspray problem. Or I could just call it intentional, I suppose.

Update: I don't think participating in giveaways is an effective use of my time. Giveaways to my suppliers and friends, maybe. But not as effective advertising.