Saturday, June 1, 2024

Living Room Stencil?

I've been playing with my stencil files again. I don't know for sure if I can cut them out with my Cricut, but if I can't, I suspect I have at least one friend with a laser cutter. (I'm hoping, anyway.)

I've spent like four days playing with images trying to come up with a stencil that I like but I don't really know what I want and I keep changing my mind. The downstairs rooms are more difficult to choose colors because we can't use light paint colors because they will get lost in the wall paint color.

I think I maybe have settled on this first one but this one will be a lot more difficult to fudge corners and add extra bits to fill space.

Sherwin Williams 41 from their 1910 catalog

I also prepped the files for this stencil, but I'm worried with all that orange it won't look good over the green wall paint. It does have the advantage of being stencil-able in one pass.

Blue Label 1559 from the 1900 catalog
This third option was the one I picked to do several years ago but now I've mostly abandoned it because I'm not convinced it will look good over the green paint.
Alabastine 305 from their 1920 catalog
I am experimenting with adding a large painted field below the flower but that may not work well because the stencil area is so large. 
One of the main reasons for this post is because I wanted to mention a new-to-me program I found that is super helpful for making stencils. I was trying to use my Cricut Design Space software and it was super frustrating because it just wouldn't do what I wanted it to. It's possible it would work better if I paid them the $15/month subscription, but I only use it a few times a year and have no use for any of their art files.

Anyway, when I clicked on one of my svg files it came up with Curve software. What? I don't even remember downloading that, but I must have. Anyway, its long name is Linearity Curve Graphic Design and the starter version (which is what I've been using) is available for free. I just uploaded my stencil clip art file, asked it to trace it, and it was super easy to remove the background and make changes. I have only used it for a few hours and I'm already a fan.

Update later: I spoke too soon on the free Curve program. I made the HUGE mistake of letting it update and now it's practically worthless unless you pay them. Sigh.

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