 Guys, I thought we would go over how to make some stencils by hand without anything fancy. This is at the request of Mr. Victor Crofter, so Victor, this is just for you. You don't need a lot of fancy stuff to make stencils, you know, if you have a stencil cutting machine or a silhouette or something like that, that's great, but I make plenty of stencils by hand. These are some of the things we're going to use. These are just yogurt container lids. Some product packaging. I don't remember what this is from, but this might be from when I got my new iPhone. I don't remember exactly, but it's just some clear plastic. And this is just a piece of plain cardstock. I also use junk mail cardstock when I have some. Actually, I'm out of it right now, which is shocking. But if you get some, you know, thick junk mail, you can use that too. So the first thing that we're going to do is I'm going to actually cut a piece of this off because this is kind of big. I'm not going to cut it in about, in about half, I'm not going to measure it or anything. And then I'm going to take my pencil and I'm going to just draw, just doodle a shape, some designs, simple shapes. This is a stencil that I've actually already created for myself. And I like my stencils to look uneven and hand drawn and I'm not looking for perfect. That's kind of the charm of them, right? So I'll do some kind of basic design. I've done this one a few times and I'll do, you know, the basic outline and then frequently I'll come back in like I'm doing right now and just, you know, clean up my shapes a little bit. I want it to look hand drawn, but I don't want it to be, you know, crazy. Okay. And you just need a sharp exacto knife with a nice blade on it. Using a cutting mat, this is an omni grid mat from the quilting department at a fabric store. And you can hear that it, you heard it was a little sticky because I've been using this for my collage Fridays and it got a little bit of glue on it. So then I'm going to cut away, oh, so something sometimes it's good to do before you start cutting is put an X in the part of the stencil that you want to remove and you don't get confused. Yeah. Then cut away those shapes and this is how I made the stencil that I used on the front of the journaling by five's journal that I just finished, which is the same sort of a pattern. And whenever I get inspired for a design that I think will make a great hand cut stencil, I usually just sit real quick with a piece of card stock or a piece of plastic or whatever product packaging I have that I've saved and sit and make the stencil. And I don't really clean these hand cut stencils, of course, especially if they're made out of paper, but that layer of acrylic paint, if you let it dry on there, especially with the paper will make your stencil a little stronger, make it last a little longer. And of course you can do really intricate designs. Honestly, I don't have the patience for that. So I rarely do that, at least on a hand cut stencil. I think it's time to clean my mat. I think it's a little sticky. So there you have an interesting stencil that will make a great design on a page or journal cover or something else. And then I have these around these yogurt lids I thought I would try to do something with. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to cut the lip away the edge. So I'm just left with the flat center part. You probably don't have to do this, but I just thought it might make my life a little easier and I'm pretty sure it will. Now I would probably stencil with it this side up because there's a little bump in the middle, but I think that I'm going to draw my design on this side. So what if we cut away the center? So your sections have to be connected. What if we did something like this? We're going to cut these parts away. This is just a permanent black marker. All right, let's see what that looks like. You have to push a little harder when you're working with these plastic materials to get through all the layers of plastic and you probably are going to need to go around twice. Really should have my reading glasses on for this. Yeah, that would be interesting. Kind of a negative of a flower shape. Keep your fingers out of the way when using a sharp instrument like an X-Acto knife. Yeah, that's interesting shape. I like that one. So look around your studio or your house, your kitchen and see what kind of materials you have that you can reuse and create your own homemade unique mark making tools to use in your art. Something that's uniquely you that you didn't buy at the store. Creating pretty art does not require tons of money. Just a bit of ingenuity and creativity. And I'm going to actually be cutting a few of these stencils, different stencils for a special upcoming project. So stay tuned for that. Now obviously because this one is made out of a plastic lid, it's going to hold up a little better than the paper one, but it's also a lot more difficult to cut. So I usually use some kind of card stock because it's easier to cut, but look at that. I like that. So look and see what you have around your house and make yourself some stencils. Don't forget to have some fun while you're at it and all my contact information is in the description below along with where you can sign up for online courses that I teach by stuffinmyetsyshop, send me happy mail, all that stuff is in the description below. Don't forget to have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. I'll see you later. Bye.