Fun With Self-Portrait Stencil

I finally tried a cool idea I got from the book True Vision: Authentic Art Journaling by L.K. Ludwig. I thought it would be too hard, but I just decided to do it tonight. I made a self-portrait stencil. I used a photo booth pic from my Mac webcam. I used a free online site to turn the photo into a cartoon and I printed it in high contrast black and white. The site I used waswww.befunky.com. Then, I put a clear plastic sheet over the photo and traced all the black areas with a sharpie. I found an X-acto knife pen and cut out ALL the black areas. I experimented with my stencil using spray inks from Ranger and Tattered Angels. I sponged pigment ink over the stencil for the purple one. I thought I'd share my results here and then work these into some journal pages. I think you should try one- I am NOT an expert with the X-acto knife. When the little pieces didn't come out easily I used tiny scissors to finish cutting and lifting the pieces out.

So, my friends, the moral is... If I can do this, YOU can certainly do it, too!

This is the cartoon photo I started with.

The purple one was made from pigment ink sponged over the stencil. This made the cleanest lines.
This one was sprayed with Ranger ink, the purple was left on the stencil and it rubbed off on this one.

This one did not make a clean print because too much spray got underneath the stencil. I let it dry and then resprayed with a darker ink.
This one was a negative print first. I soaked up all the ink on top of the stencil with a new sheet of paper. Then I used the stencil to ink the positive lines into the white spaces.