#diy stencil

[leafdlc]

can't WAIT to slap this on some fabric and make a patch but unfortunately I have run out of tshirts to tear up and make patches with.

[incisors-galore]

attempt number 3 on this fucking thing

this stencil's gonna kill me

[teaboot]

How do you make your patches for your vest? They look so cool!

Acrylic paint or matte fabric paint

Old black jeans

Cardboard or cardstock, ideally thin cardboard from packaging waste

Xacto knife

Pencil

Computer

Old sponge or makeup dabber

I pull up the logos from the bands I love and trace them onto printer paper or wax paper wirh pencil. Then I put that paper pencil-side-down on cardboard and rub the back hard until the pencil is transferred to the surface. Then I take an xacto razor and cut out the shape of the logo. Put the newly-made stencil right-side-up on the fabric and sponge paint on.

Let the paint dry, then go over it a few times if needed with a brush. Fix errors with black paint.

Sewing the patch on, I get double-sides fusing from the fabric store to make iron-on patches, or just pin them down and sew by hand.

Highly recommend double sided fusing for all kinds of patch jobs if you have issues sewing for any reason, just know that the glue melts into the fabric and will leave marks if you try to remove them later.

Glad you like 'em! ♡♡♡♡♡ V proud 😊

Current status: ⏬ ⏬ ⏬

Addition: here is what it looked like when I originally thrifted it- tag said it was a distressed denim forever 21 jacket, size large ⏬ ⏬ ⏬

for a lil how it is/how it started ♡

[dognonsense]

Question...how do you make your patches? They seem so fuckin cool. I'm working on a vest and a jacket atm, and I'd like for them to be done by the time a pride fest rolls around next month.

Main technique I use for making patches nowadays is linocut. Its best suited for mass production of patches.

Make sure to remember your carving the mirror image so you have to flip all the text. Using tracing paper to flip the design is a good trick, as well as leaving graphite marks on side, then pressing that to the lino to leave the marks in the same spot. Another trick with pencil is to view what ur carving in negative space quickly, put a paper over your design and shade over it with pencil, darker marks will be where you haven't carved yet.

I use speedball fabric ink, it takes 1 week to set then will be fine to be washed. I have magenta, violet, turqouise, and white. They have a limited range of fabric colors at the store. I have seen gold and silver fabric paint for sale and I will investigate it one day.

I use a speedball roller, i find the smaller one to be better than the big one as I can be more precise and waste less ink.

I got a fancy handle for $40 but the screws fallen out so its broken now so just get some heavy books. I used to use a mug. Whats important is pushing your whole body weight into it.

I got a speedball carving tool with different heads I can swap out so I can cut into the lino at different deepness and widths. The heads are stored inside the tool since its hollow and has a screwable removable bottom. I use linocut or dollar store erasers for my carvings. Make sure to wash the ink off your linocuts after your done using them.

A thing to increase the lifespan of you're linocuts is to use wood glue, some cork or wood pieces, and glued the lino stamps onto them. I dont do that yet so my stamps fall appart from overuse sometime and because I cut way too deep into the lino since I hate chatter.

Chatter is the term for in linocutting when theres little messy lines and stuff. It makes the art more recognisably to be linocut. My work is very clean with no chatter which is why people don't notice its linocut usually. This is a stylistic choice, with diy styles having a lot of chatter can look really cool so experiment with leaving bits of extra uncarvered lino sticking out in ur stamp. I need to experiment and buy some more lino.

You can also use multiple linocut stamps together to make a patch. Some patches ive made have like 8 different stamps. Ive made a dog nonsense patch where each letter was their own eraser stamp. You can also use different colors between the different lino stamps on the same patch to add more color. An effect I like to do is first stamp it in color, then the next day I stamp it in white over the same spot but shifted to the right and down slightly. It makes the text have a cool border 3D effect I love doing.

If making a more detailed picture with colors, i reccomend hand painting patches. I use white fabric paint mixed with acrylics for color to get all the shades i need. Acrylic paint mixed with fabric softener works too.

If doing words and you dont want a unique font reccomend using letter stamps. If you want a unique font for that i recommend hand paint for individual or linocut for mass produce.

The positive of letter stamps is the font is neat and can be done quickly. I know from lending them to my roommate that they are very helpful if you have dyslexia and have trouble getting letters right.

A visual effect of the letter stamps is that have a nice boxy edge effect, its an imperfection that adds a personally touch to it. I have both lower and upper case stamps that I got from michaels. You can use a hair band or elastic to hold a bunch of letter stamps together to make a word stamp.

You can use other stamps than letters that you find at craft stores for example my racoon print is a craftstore stamp.

You can also find big plastic letter stencils at the dollar store that you can use to do lettering by filling in gaps with a sponge or or paintbrush. They make special paintbrushes just for using stencils.

You can also get plastic stencils in the shapes of things, i got some for children and use a horse stencil for my horse smoking weed patch. Easier than drawing a horse myself.

Another technique I use for more unique clean patches is gel plating. I haven't tried printing laserprint images with it as ive seen online a lot but I will try one day. What i personally do is use it to make imprints with chains and physical objects.

Another thing i use with gelplates are any stamps or linocuts that dont have words, or words ones that i fucked up with and forgot to mirror when carving. It flips mirror image twice with the gel plate so it goes back to being right again on the patch.

Another patch making technique is using foamboard cut into shapes glued onto cardboard. This is good for a quick test of a design and is very cheap to make. It will not hold under water so is more difficult to clean.

[ghouljoy]

yippee yayyy

[borninwinter81]

Cyber goth dress + my favourite way to make patches

I thrifted this dress a couple of weeks ago for £1. I believe it started life as some sort of costume, possibly a sexy firefighter, but the fabric is really good quality cotton, and I thought it had some cybergoth potential with the yellow and reflective bits. I also really like the metal fastenings.

I already had a high-viz coat in my wardrobe from when I used to go bicycling more often, so I was able to steal more reflective bits from that. Not yet sure what I'll do with them, probably cut interesting shapes and glue or sew them on. Photos with and without flash.

And then yesterday I got a half meter of cotton fabric for £1 which is an almost exact colour match, so I can make some stencilled patches.

I already had fabric paint at home, so this entire outfit has only cost me £2! Cybergoth clothing is usually super expensive.

There are lots of tutorials for making stencilled patches on YouTube, (@rattusrattus3 has some excellent ones) but I lack patience and don't like cutting out intricate pieces, especially for lettering, so I had the idea to use alphabet stickers. You can pick these up really cheap from your local pound shop or dollar store depending on where you're from. I think mine were 40p a packet.

Stick them to your fabric, use fabric paint and a sponge, then when you peel the stickers off you'll have the words in relief. You can go thicker than I have here to make the surrounding area totally opaque, but I like the edges being messy and faded out. These are both song titles from cyber/industrial bands that I like.

Here are some other examples that I've done in the past. These were all done with pound shop spray paint which isn't ideal for fabric, but it's cheap! You'll also get more of the original fabric colour showing through with this kind of paint, which is nice.

If you're using black fabric, gold or silver paint will generally work better than white. These are all Devin Townsend song lyrics.

The only negative to this method for some people may be that the letters will be very uniform, but I like that. And if you want to you can space them irregularly to break things up a bit. Or you might be able to find more interestingly shaped alphabet stickers than I did!

[moss-opossum]

I don’t feel like I have any super substantive updates on my patch vest (I’ve been in a pretty bad flareup for a bit), but there are some new additions so I thought I’d share anyway.

Image description: the front of a dark grey denim vest with the arm holes hand-hemmed in red thread. On the left lapel is a large heart-shaped it/its pin surrounded by a cloudy rainbow border. On the chest beside it is an enamel Magen David pin in the colors of the trans flag, beside which is a crocheted watermelon attached with a safety pin. On the left breast pocket is a cross-stitched asexual flag secured with dark purple thread and an acrylic pin of an opossum holding a non-binary heart. On the right breast pocket there is a machine-embroidered sunflower patch, and beneath that is another machine-embroidered patch reading “disabled is not a bad word”, secured by lavender thread. Above the pocket is a genderqueer flag pin, next to that is a cross-stitched patch reading “I mask so I don’t bite you” in all caps with a red border and “bite” in red. Above that is a small holographic pin with a sparkly rainbow heart on it. /end description

Image description: the back of the same vest, with two stenciled black patches, one on each shoulder, each secured by x-shaped stitches in lavender thread. The one on the left reads “queer joy”, the one on the right reads “T4T”. /end description

I love my vest and I love talking about it, so if anyone has questions about any part of it please don’t be shy to ask!

[rexultigirl]

crusty ski mask i made to wear during shows lol

it sucks to wear and it is uncomfortable but it is mine

[crowgvts]

two more stencils I whipped up tonight!!!

bat and a deathshead hawkmoth!

[somecrustypunk]

How to make a stencil for your patches

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

You will need:

Sponge

Watercolour paper / card

Art knife / boxcutter

Acrylic paint

Fabric

1. Find what you want to make into a patch. It's best if you can find a black and white image of what you want (or just draw it), whatevers in white should be able to support itself when you get rid of the negative space.

2. Print and use the edge of a pencil to shade the back of the image, it should look a bit tike this.

3. Flip around and use masking tape to stick it to card or watercolour paper, then use a blunt pencil to trace around your image. You should be left with a faded outline of what you want on the card underneath.

4. Use an art knife or box cutter to carve out all the negative space

5. Finally used a sponge and some acrylic paint and dab it over the stencil onto your fabric. I ironed the fabric I used beforehand so it was flatter and easier to print on

Anyway Ive struggled finding ways to print that work for me so I hope this works for other ppl

[wintericeace]

Well holy shit! My 2nd stencil, it's perfect! I can't believe how good this came out 😭

Shit. I just noticed I stenciled it sideways. Ahhh fuck it, I still love it

[incisors-galore]

Easy Paper and Tape Stencil Tutorial

made one for reddit so I might as well post it here as well

Materials

writing utensil (pen, pencil, marker, etc)

paper (i usually use plain printer paper but most other scrap paper works fine as well, just be aware that thicker paper makes it harder to trace existing designs/logos)

clear packing tape

scissors and/or exacto knife (those little scissors you can get in cheap nail care kits work great

Optional Materials: Device w/ screen of your choice, printer

Step 1:

Draw out your design, trace from device, or print out design

(in example image I am tracing from a screen)

r/AnarchoStencilism (Deviantart link if you prefer) is great for free stencil designs

Step 2:

Cover both sides (front and back) of the design in packing tape

Step 3:

Cut it out

Step 4:

Use your exacto knife/scissors to cut out the design

Step 4:

Apply to whatever you want!

Happy DIYing!

[metach]

Eat the rich

[brazenedminstrel]

New load of patches!

Partially for a pouch I’m making for the wonderful @divinely-devious

WIP pics:

[ghouljoy]

patches for a friend <3

[draculiza]

my heart leaps when I can match my clothes with my hair, especially when it's shit I made myself 💚