Reindeer & Wreath Pillow from Cut Stencil

Finished Reindeer pillow
in a Christmas decor ensemble

This simple yet graphic pillow seemed the perfect IDEA to 

coordinate with my other seasonal  "stuffies". 

A vinyl stenciling inspiration was offered recently on the Silhouette blog. 

After seeing that, I was hoping to recreate instead 

the rustic feed sack Pottery Barn look for myself. 

As I searched my Silhouette  library, suddenly it clicked

 that by combining a couple of designs, I could stencil something 

that would be "practically perfect".

Taped-up design, adhesive-sprayed and positioned

Designs I selected are "reindeer" by Snapdragon Snippets and "olive branch wreath" (can't find the designer to give attribution). Text was created with the text tool, then I stencil-ized the words by erasing parts. 


Next, I manipulated the designs on my Studio screen by enlarging, reversing the image, rearranging, etc. Since I am still working on the smaller mat Silhouette-1 machine, I could NOT assemble the complete layout on-screen. 


Also,  I could only cut part of the wreath design in the scale I wanted to fit around the reindeer. So instead of cutting a vinyl stencil, I cut card stock parts, played around with the "cutouts" until I got the arrangement I wanted, then laid the stencil "negative" areas back over the cutouts and taped them together well. I sprayed adhesive on the backside, then positioned and "rolled" it well to make sure all edges were sealed down. I also masked off the entire piece of fabric so that there would be no over-spray paint where it wasn't wanted.

Next I sprayed with acrylic brown paint. Because I want the "worn" look, I used light but even coverage.

(You may notice that I used a small cut circle, temp-glued in place for the reindeer eye.)

When the paint was dry, I peeled away the stencil. Being a card stock stencil, it was still in great shape and I used it to stencil more pillow fronts. This is something that a stencil cut from vinyl can't accomplish very well.

Here is the completed pillow front (though in this shot, I have not yet removed the eye "dot").

And finally, the finished pillow, with added red flange edge accent.