First freezer paper stencil, Shaolin curtain of DEATH!

[JediLynne]

My SO just moved away to go to college, and is in a very...interesting old house. There are many peculiarities that the current residents have come to accept and expect, like the bathroom doorknob not always staying on, at least one utility being in a state on disrepair at all times, and his room's closet door being in the basement, with a completely different varnish than the rest of the house. Knowing he, (and certainly not I,) would try to restain the door, I set out to make him a rad curtain to cover the mess of a closet.

For my first freezer paper stencil, you would think I'd try to do something small, approachable, and...sane. It seems I thought otherwise.

I started documenting the process once I got the pic blown up and I had finished filling in areas of the stencil with marker. I don't remember the specifics of why I had to do that, something with the printer, probably. And yes, it took up the whole end of my twin bed.



Here's where the cutting started. It took about 3 or 4 hours, and I'm very proud that I didn't cut myself once. (This is from the person who has accidentally stabbed herself with both knitting needles and forks. Both hurt, I would strongly advise against trying it.)



Once the stencil was cut and ironed onto the curtain, which was no small ordeal, the paint was sponged on.



Aaand here's what our monk ended up looking like!



I decided to wrap it up with a quick representation of shaolin monk beads.



Here's what it looks like hanging. I also put the characters for shaolin (or so I think, at least,) up in the corner to add some visual balance.



Hooray! I hope you enjoyed seeing my first foray into freezer paper stenciling, I'm sure it won't be my last.

[Nostrum]

Very cool, and very lucky!

Where did you find the source image? I'd love to get my hands on a bunch of the different forms and put together something for my mister.

[razzledazzelOConnel]

Wow, that's awesome! 

[skaborsk]

wow. i'm impressed! that is a pretty ballsy project for your first time, AND it came out great. nice job!

[xperimentl]

What an awesome image, I really like it.  I am impressed that you went for it and did something big.  My son's curtains may not be boring for much longer.  Thanks for the idea! 

[UnstableKitten]

This is excellent! Although I'm wondering how it worked when it got so big? As in holding the two pages together and stenciling it. I'd also love to know where you got the stencil, I'm sure the boyfriend would like it.

[Nostrum]

I've been scouring Google images with every combination of keywords, and haven't found anything as cool.

[JediLynne]

Hi! The source image I used is this one. http://www.shaolin-wushu.de/media/kungfu05.jpg I had to make up some of it, since some midtones disappeared in photoshop. If you want clear pics of kung fu forms, I would pick up a copy of kung fu magazine and xerox some pages. I think they always have at least one new form per issue. Maybe a library would have it?

Regarding how I stenciled it so big; I used one sheet for the bulk of the image, and just taped another small section to the top. Yeeah...a lot of tape and a lot of patience. I don't think there was any good trick to it.

Thank you for the comments, I'm really proud of how it turned out!