Complete Stencil Tutorial Using a Free Program

A tutorial on making a stencil with an open source program called the GIMP.

I looked on all the Instructs tagged with stencil, and not one gives a step by step for making a stencil in my favorite open source photo program The GIMP.

Step 1 Materials and GIMP

-What You Need-
-printer
-craft knife
-The GIMP
-surface to cut on (self healing mat)
-spray mount (optional)
-spray paint

GIMP is an open source raster based graphics editor. It was designed to replace Photoshop.
You can get it here. gimp.org

Install it, open it up, and familarize yourself with the interface for a bit. Done? Good. Isn't open source great? Didn't cost a dime!

Comments

[elementrider]

how did you blow up the image?

[HuntingWabbits]

Threshold doesn't work :/ My image comes out pixelated

[skyhawkes]

My God man!! This is a giant help and I think I love you... just sayin'... and thank you so much for using GIMP. I fell in love with it like 2 years ago but I never knew I could make a stencil with it. That was stupid easy.

[JoshuaTerrell]

No problem. :)

[ilpug]

Nicely done. i will check out the GIMP. Can it do something that a high-levcel Photoshop program cant? cuz i have one and it works fine.

[GEARSOFinvention]

Thanks a LOT for this i'ble man!

[!revenge!]

hi i have a question about the spray painting itself,
i made a stencil a while ago and i wanted to test it before spraying it to my old guitar. but this is what happened: after testing the stencil, the paint caused the paper to curl up.
do you have any idea how i can prevent this the next time i do this?

greets,

Jelle
ps.
my English may be not very good because i am from the Netherlands and i am 14 years old.

[CerealKiller]

Here's Mine: Just can figure out how to print it.

[DavidKaine]

Nice. The other side of the helmet (if this is the one from Full Metal Jacket) would have made for a nice ironic stencil, too.

[zs]

ctrl +p

[rasta_bhoy]

I don't even print mine. I just use my laptop's LCD screen and I would tape the bond paper on it and just trace on it. That's if you have access to an LCD screen. You also skip the outline and printing part too.

[zatla]

Haha I tend to do the same, I also use a piece of thin transparent plastic in between the paper and the screen. (A4 fits very well on 15,4") Bless!

[mhkabir]

Don't pixels get stuck on the screen?

[theRIAA]

nice! if you are doing a face or something tricky you may want to try out changing the hue or color of the image to greater tune in details when its in B&W (adjustment layers in PS is the only way i know how to do this)

such as:

http://dpchallenge.com/tutorial.php?TUTORIAL_ID=43

(before stencilizing it)

[92033]

3-1/2 Years Later :-) (just discovered this)...THANKS For Posting the URL. GREAT STUFF.

[Russian sniper]

Heres mine!!!!

[Charles IV]

Here's mine:

[PKTraceur]

Anyone Guess how long? I did this with ONE very sharp pocket knife, cutting it on top of about 20 more papers. Nearly 2 HOURS. The result was kickin' though!

[PKTraceur]

-RoAr

[PKTraceur]

-Roar

[PKTraceur]

Grr....

[PKTraceur]

Here is what it's based off of...

[volquete]

w00t! parkour rox!

[bvulgarin]

Very useful, thanks!

[soongone]

Thanks it was easy to understand

[slimguy379]

hello great job... this isn't Really about this instructable but though you could help... I currently have a screen printing business and I'm trying to make a 3 - 6 color shirt.. is there a way to separate each and every color? (using gimp, word, or publisher?) the response would be greatly appreciated...

[Maxinama]

It's really easy to do just go image>mode>indexed, select the amount of colors (white backround will count as color) you want and click convert.

[stevedem]

yeah, you can select each color and separate each one as it's own layer.

[robbs]

I tried to change the color of my stencil using "select by color" but it remained black. What am I doing wrong? Thanks for the input.

[ericgay]

NICE!

[fwjs28]

woot!

[PKTraceur]

If it's any help, and your colours are inverted, try colours

[runkrocker]

cool instructable! vey vey helpful. i dont fully know all of what photoshop and gimp can do and this was awesome. i made an invader zim stencil. yay!!!

[PKTraceur]

GIR!

[patycuack]

what do you think about this one i made minutes ago... first try, i think its not well done..

[cornflaker]

It's quite good if you can actually cut it out...

[master-of-chaos]

its good but u need to sure up some lines, smooth it out

[JoshuaTerrell]

haha, not bad at all, I'm glad to see evryones getting in the act

[eat_squids]

Yeah...here's a couple i did. Hope you like them/

[eat_squids]

For some reason they didn't post...here they are for real =)