Lasso The Moon

Cowboy Day

With all the Christmas mayhem this year, this is the only picture I took of any of the gifts I made.  Oops.  I'll get back into it--I promise.

 

Cowboy Day, acrylic on canvas

It's a painting of my two kids based on a photo I took of them the summer of 2008.  Emma was 3 and Ethan was 1, and they were walking next door to church for Vacation Bible School.  I gave it to Donnie on Christmas morning.  A bittersweet reminder of how fast they are growing up, and the great life we had in Indiana.

The background was done with the help of both kids.  The foreground was done with the help of freezer paper.

Babies everywhere!

More stencilling.  Am I driving anyone crazy yet?  Sorry.  But this still won't be the last.

A couple onesies made for a friend while I was in Dallas.  The two on the right are mine.  The one with the spiders was made by my sister, Abby.  I love how she used both parts of the stencil.  Cool idea and great placement, Abby!

We used back issues of Home Companion magazine to jog our brains when we were coming up with ideas.  The dog came straight out of my imagination, which is unusual for me, and the car was inspired by an Orla Kiely journal I saw at Anthropolgie.  (I love her!)

These two were made the same day, for a friend whose baby's initials are BMW.  Cute, huh?  Oh!  Before you start painting a shirt or onesie, be sure and stick something between the layers of fabric to prevent the paint from bleeding through to the back!  We used a piece of freezer paper with the plastic side up.

I didn't want the great car shape to go to waste, so I made Ethan this little bag.  And then I left it behind in Texas.  Oops.

Try it yourself!

Here's the design I came up with for a birthday gift this week.  It's a simple bird design to trace and stencil using the freezer paper method. 

 Download this file, and print it out. It is complete with directions.

Download freestencil.pub

  It's a publisher file.  If you try to download it and can't, please let me know.  I've never tried this before.

To make a two color, layered image, trace the design onto two different sheets of freezer paper.  Then darken only the section of the stencil that you want painted in each color.  Then only cut the darkened areas of each.  

Remove the first stencil and wait until the first color is dry before adding the overlapping color.  I did the bird body only in blue, the stem only in brown, and everything else was in both colors.  The effect was cool since the two stencils didn't line up perfectly, and both colors showed through.

It would be great if I had a picture of the finished product, but true to form I wrapped it up and gave it away before I thought to take a picture.  Of course.