A little how-to-do for your own stencils...

...and my newest favorit one! Look at the cute (Yes, I think he is cute ^^) grashopper above! I took one of the pictures of my inspirations: critters (botanical garden Leipzig) and converted it to a black and white image. Just use the image editing functions programms like word have integrated. Better ones are not necessary for you just want to make a stencil out of it. I play a little bit with the contrast and the brightness until I see the lines I want to cut.

The grashopper image:

In b/w and printed:

Most of the lines are easy to see and therefore to cut. But some points are a little bit difficult and have to be modified (hope you see the circles, if not: just enlarge the picture!):

All pieces have to be connected to each other. If not you can either leave a little connecting space (red circle) or move the object a little bit (green circle, originally the legs were crossed!). And if a little detail is missing just add it! Like I did with one of the legs (blue circle).

And another example this time a flower (Inspirations: Flowers (botanical garden Leipzig)).

Printed after some modfications (contrast / brightness) in b/w

Cut out

The negative image

The positive image

If you are not satisfied you can easy modifiy a picture like this. For example if you would prefer that all petals are to be seen separately just cut a line between the two connected ones. Really easy. And don't be frightened to lose your worl. Just make pictures of your stencils and print them out again! This way you can keep your original one and try out a lot of modifications of the shape until you like it :) Also a way for creating stencils with different sizes. Make a picture and print it at the desired size. All what is left to do is to cut it out again ^^

The next one is take from my collection Formentera: Critter. Here I just added the missing tail. I made it a little bit more curvy ^^

And the gecko... think I will change the head a little bit but not now (as soon as there is a specific project for ^^). But the movemont in the body is great!