Terran Stencil

Apparently I’ve been on a massive creative flow. Bringing back the blog….writing some poetry, and now I’ve finished this new project. I hope you guys like it. And just as a heads up, there are a lot of pictures in this post.

About a month ago I bought some Ikea furniture. Bought this shoe rack thing just because I thought it was cool and it saves a bit of space in my apartment. But as you’ll see, it’s unpainted birch veneer. So it sat around in my apartment performing its noble shoe-holding duties but it was missing a little something. Since I look at it pretty often, I finally decided I should do something about how plain it is.

Then one day I picked up Banksy’s book Wall and Piece. I always loved how his stuff looked and how he’d do crazy stunts like putting his own art work in museums. But I really like how his stencils look in particular. In the book, he talks about how graffiti is something that allows the masses to add art and opinions to a public forum...or something like that. But silly messaging aside; I’ll accept that challenge.

Just in case you don’t know who Banksy is or what his work looks like

Step 1:
I picked a design. It was a quick decision.

I once saw a TL signature that said, “StarCraft was a game that was designed to have a worst race. You play the worst one.” It made me laugh.

Step 2: Cut out the stencil
I taped the logo to a piece of advertising that was mailed to me. It was nice and thick…and maybe even laminated. Then I used my pocketknives and cut out the negative of the logo.

No I’m not trying to show off my pocketknives. The grey one is extremely sharp and I wanted to be safe. The black one is duller. Also, I was too lazy to crop the picture.

Step 3: Reinforcement
So after the stencil was done, I found more ads in the mail that were printed on heavy stock. I used those as reinforcements on the edges of the stencil since the ad I used came folded.

So here is Mr. Stencil.

Step 4: Test
I sprayed a test run. Turns out that that laminated stock bit me in the ass as it would pool the paint and run off a little. Also, I found I could only spray twice on the same stencil before too much paint pooled. In the future, if I make more, I might make multiples of the same stencil.

These were two of the good test sprays I did. The other two were all splotchy and drippy.

Step 5: Tag my furniture.
Finally, I tagged the rack. It came out slightly sloppy since the veneer was pretty slick. To improve on this in the future, I’ll probably scuff the surface a little so the paint takes hold better. That being said, I like how it looks a little off.

Also, random shoutout to GGWP Apparel for sponsoring Axslav and making some really cool SC2 themed t-shirts. I have this one which showcases the best build order.

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Top Half Closeup

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Bottom Half Closeup

And yes, I realize that the head is facing the wrong way. Please forgive my sins. Also, if anyone could teach me how to easily re-size pictures, I'd be extremely grateful. I just spent way too long in Paint using the re-size function.