Freezer Paper and Tracing

Now that you have an image printed out to work with, we need to trace it onto the freezer paper. When tearing off your piece of freezer paper, be generous. The freezer paper will cover the places that you don't want bleached, so having a big enough piece to cover the shirt is important. It may not be possible to cover the whole shirt with one piece of freezer paper, but you can use old towels or more freezer paper to cover the exposed areas.

Lay your freezer paper down flat and tape the stencil, face down, to the glossy plastic side. (Image 2) Now flip the freezer paper over and begin tracing the image on the paper side. The lightbox comes in handy here, but is not necessary for most stencils if working in a well lit area.

The Extra Line, "Islands", and "Splash" Backgrounds

When you are done tracing you may want to freehand a line around the edge of the stencil. You will need to do this if you want the shirt colored border to be distinctly visible. Take a look at the final product (Picture 8) and think, "What would it have looked like if he hadn't added the line?" The brighter outline would not have been there, and I think it would have probably looked alright without it, but during creation of the shirt I opted to put it in. Had it not been put in, the different pieces of Vault Boy (fingers, jacket, hair, etc) would be separate "islands", and your brain would infer the borders. (The stencil in Step 6 (Dr. Steven Brule shirt) also used the "extra line", and a portion of his hairline would not have been possible if I had not added this line.)

You can also do a "splash" background which would not require this extra line. You would however discard the freezer paper that is surrounding the outline, and spray the shirt at your discretion. The discarding of the surrounding paper does not need to be done right away either. You can choose to peel the background layer of the stencil away, to expose the background for bleaching, AFTER you've already applied bleach to other, previously exposed, layers. Splash backgrounds can provide different "effects" depending on how its applied. Applying it one way might give a space-like effect, where as another way could look like the sun rising. Experiment with different applicators, or angles. (Example of splash Shirts from the intro: Bob's Burgers #5, V for Vendetta #6, Rittz #9)

Single Colored or Multiple Colored?

After the stencil is traced onto the freezer paper, you need to determine if you would like your shirt to have multiple color tones, or just one. Multiple color tones are produced by spraying parts of the shirt one or two times, removing a portion(s) of stencil, then spraying all exposed sections again one or two times. This can be repeated multiple times to achieve a greater number of colors. Due to the simplicity of single colored shirts, when I started making shirts I did not make multiple toned shirts. (I was happy enough having the Terran logo on a shirt.)

Single color:

If your stencil is only going to be one color, you can just cut your stencil out. Keep in mind that your stencil can use the positive space, or negative space. So essentially, every time you cut out a single color stencil, you will be able to make two shirts.(Or one shirt and matching underwear perhaps?) One with a splash background, creating a silhouette, and the other would be just the logo with a black/shirt-colored background. This works out great to make a shirt with a buddy, family member, or significant other. It may seem obvious, but just remember wherever the freezer paper is on the shirt will be the shirt color (ie Black), and not be bleached.

Multi-color:

If your shirt is going to have multiple colors or contain a lot of "island" pieces, I've found that it makes things easier to mark portions (with a Sharpie) of the stencil that will not be cut, until it's ironed onto the shirt. From here on I will call these "Do not cut" portions. These sections will create "bridges" between the different parts of your stencil. Leaving portions uncut will allow you to move your stencil to the shirt in one piece, and ensure everything lines up correctly.

Since this will be multi-colored, I took a fine tip Sharpie and marked my "do not cut" portions. (Picture 6. Some additional lines can be seen in Picture 7 that I added while cutting.) Cut your stencil making sure not to cut the "do not cut" portions you've marked. The brightest portions can be completely removed as they will be bleached first. In this case the brightest portion was the teeth.

You might find that you prefer to just cut out the entire stencil and line up the "island" pieces by hand, then iron them onto the shirt. This is much quicker on simpler stencils, lettering with floating portions (A, O, R, B), or when alignment isn't critical. The Bob's Burgers, V for Vendetta, and Rittz shirts were done this way.

(Note: As with many things, the more planning and preparation you put into your stencil, the nicer your final product will be.)