Palm Leaf & Blossom Tropical Stencil Designs

Multiple Palm Leaf & Blossom designs

can be cut as stencils

then used to apply paint designs

to table cloths, placemats,

or as vinyl.

Coordinates for an island or pool party.

Designs soon available from SnapDragon Snippets

through Silhouette America or SVG Attic.

GUIDANCE & INSPIRATIONAL TUTORIAL

1. Decide which design you want to use, audition and select a layout (including scaling for enlarged sizes), then load the design in Silhouette Studio software to send the cut design to the Cameo cutting tool, load tool with stencil or other vinyl, then cut.

Design options in this set include triangle center motif, circular leaf wreath, block quatrafoil leaf desgns, and leaf and corner block border layouts.

The design sampled here is for the block and leaf frieze design that will be painted on a plain place mat

2. Use hook tool to remove the parts of the cut stencil vinyl that will be painted areas in the finished design.

Take care with the small "floating" oval shapes that are easily lost, shifted, transferred incorrectly, etc.

3. Cover the weeded stencil vinyl with a matched size transfer sheet.

(Transfer sheet is like very wide masking tape, sticky on one side, paper backed.)

4. Use a screen printing squeegee (or sturdy credit card) to rub across the back of the transfer sheet to help the vinyl stick to the transfer sheet and release from the vinyl's paper backing.

5. Position and secure the transfer assembly onto the project face in the final position. Use creases, temporary marker lines, pins and anything else you can think of on the project to help align and center the design.

Plack Pigma or other permanent pen can be used to make guidemarks on the stencil vinyl when it can plainly be seen to assist in this alignment and positioning process. For instance, a baseline extension can be marked to each side of the cut design, or center marks can be measured and marked, both vertical center and horizontal center.

6. Burnish across the positioned transfer assembly to help each part of the stencil adhere to the project's fabric face side.,

7. Carefully roll back to remove the transfer sheet, making sure that all "floating" bits and intricate edges detach from transfer sheet, and remain where they should on the project's face.

Take care, with the palm leaf designs, to get the floating tiny ovals to remain.

8. Use masking tape to enlarge the protected working paint area to each side of cut area. This projects the project surface from stray strokes, or errant finger marks, etc.

Use stencil brush and cream stencil paints (oil based) to fill the blank spaces in the stencil with your selected paint color. Work the paint fully into the design, and apply more paint strokes for a consistent color density.

9. Allow the paint to dry for several hours so that there is no possibility of smearing or transferring to hands, clothing or other surfaces. Release the edge tape, then pull away the stencil. Use fine tool like hook to remove small vinyl shapes within the interior of the designs.

Here is an image showing the finished place mat design that has been demonstrated.

10. The sample table topper demonstrated here is a 24" piece of coarse weave home decoration fabric (linen like). The center was located by folding in half in both directions, then the triangular blossom and three leaf design was centered, following pigma black ink pen markings placed on the stencil once it was newly cut.

11. The edges of my cut fabric could be narrowly (double turn-under) hemmed, or carefully cut following the weave, then fringed at the edges for 3/4" to 1". I used a machine short straight stitch to reinforce and define the area of the fringing.

Here is a shot of the finished placemat.

And here are both projects together.