Painters Tape Skulls

Last post I got a little patriotic with the painters tape, but I couldn’t leave it at that.  I’ve never met a craft I couldn’t bend to my nefarious vision

 and I’m not about to start now.

This cute skull was created using painters tape as a stencil.

He’s pretty simple, but I’ve become rather attached to the little bugger and have decided to adopt him as my unofficial trademark.

 

 

My son really liked my bag, and wanted me to stencil his backpack, which led to the creation of the guy below, who definitely has my son’s personality. 

  Even though I designed it for him, he said it’s ok to share it with the rest of the world. If you do use it, we’d love to see what you do with it.

 

 

To make a tape stencil, print out the template and glue it onto the matte side of plastic coated freezer paper.  I’m sure wax paper would work as well. On the shiny side layer strips of painters tape.  Layer strips horizontally and then vertically overlapping by a ¼ inch.  Cut out the pieces along the lines and remove the freezer paper.  In between use, the pieces can be stored on another piece of freezer paper.  

 

 

The surface is a black backpack.  Here are all the pieces in place except for the gear piece.  I painted that area with puffy fabric paint, because it was blue, permanent and it's what I had.  I used a brush to spread it in a thin layer, brushing away from the edges of the tape.   

 

 

 

Just for fun after the paint dried I made random

lines using metallic permanent markers. 

 

 

Once that set I covered it with the corresponding tape piece.

 

 

Carefully remove the skull piece, it helps to use something pointed like a pen tip to push the little nose pieces in place.  For the skull I used an acrylic paint pen, again because it was permanent and that's what I had on hand in white. The paint pen needed a couple layers. I don't worry about even coverage, I think it gives it character.

 

 

The white really bled under the tape on the right hand side.  I don't know if I just got sloppy with the white paint, but I suspect it had more to do with not having an even layer of blue puffy paint. 

 

 

Lucky for me one of my metallic pens was a pretty close match for the blue paint so I touched things up.  I touched up the eyes and nose with a black permanent marker and added a bit more white. I like the way the pen the strokes show through when it's not a solid white.

 

 

 

Here's another skull with red from an acrylic paint pen.  I just randomly pounced it on, you can really see the difference where the paint was layered more. 

 

 

The surface here is white watercolor paper. Start with just the skull piece and throw down some color all around it.   

 

 

After it dries lay the gear piece down and sponge some color around the edges. 

 

 

Then pull up the gear piece and lay down the outline of the gear piece. 

 

 

Sponge on some color, making sure to get the eyes and nose. 

 

 

Pull up all the tape and SHAZAM!

 

 

Using tape and this template from Skull-A-Day, I dressed up an old hat. It was never a cool looking hat, I love it for its awesome sun blocking abilities, but now it has some style. I don't think the template was ever intended to be reduced under four inches.  It was a pain to cut out and some of smaller details didn't really come through the painting process.  By the last skull the smaller pieces of the stencil had torn off, but hey it's tape so I could stick them in place. Using tape as my stencil also gave me a lot of flexibility.  I was able to stencil skulls halfway on the brim going up the side without missing a beat.   

 

And that folks, is how to creep things up with painters tape.