The Crafter's Workshop BlogStencil Fade Technique

Hi there crafty friends.

Today I want to share a quick technique with you that you can apply to canvas or art journal pages.

I call this the stencil fade technique because it’s very literally that, stenciling on your project, then creating a faded out area.

*The Crafter’s Workshop provided me with some products to create this project. The opinions I share, however, are solely my own. 🙂

Finished photo close up of the technique, showing stenciling with fade colors and collage scribble text. — Finished Project close up

To view the entire project from start to finish, you can click the video below:

To start this project off I want to create some texture on the journal pages or canvas. To do this, I add a lot op paint and roll it around using a brayer. For this project I used a soft brownish yellow color and lots of white.

Close up photo of a hand brayering on paint.

Let this completely dry. Grab your favorite TCW stencil, I used TCW854 – Layered Wallpaper. Stencil towards the middle of the page. I start with lighter colors and work my way to darker offsetting the stencil pattern to create more depth.

Photo of the sand colored background with the layered stenciling pattern.

Purposefully leaving the outside edges of the page blank, since I want to create that fade look towards the edges.

Next I will start blocking out some of the areas that we stenciled. Start in the center of the page, using white paint and a paintbrush and just go over the stenciled areas. You will see some stenciling still peaking through, and this is perfect.

Photo of the sand colored background with the layered stenciling pattern and the middle of the pattern starting to fade with white paint.

now you can start adding more layers of color to this to make the fade more fluid. I add some blue, gold, yellow and magenta. Add some paint to the edges of the page too, overlapping the stenciled areas, to make it seem like its all blending together.

Photo of the pattern with multiple colors overlapping and creating a organic faded pattern.

Get in there with your fingers too, it blends really nicely that way. The texture we created earlier with the brayer will come into play here, as it will grab on to the paint nicely.

Lastly to finish this page off, I added some collage pieces with text on it. I tore it and adhered it using TCW Matte gel medium, which just gives an extra dimension to it, but this is totally optional.