Thursday, September 22, 2011

Everyday I'm Stenciling

Hello!  I thought I'd put up a quick post to show what I just recently made.  Remember the basket I made for this chandlo?  Well, my friend's brother is now having his chai pani (engagement) next month.  My friend's family has somewhat adpoted Mr. Bean and I, so I do what I can and in turn reap the benefits of awesome homemade Gujarati food.  It's a win for the Beans for sure.

My friend's mom shares my same affection for jute bags.  She received a small gift sized jute bag as part of a favor at a wedding and loves it.  It had a pretty red jacquard ribbon on it and an ohm painted on it.  Really, really cute.  She asked me to find some like it for her for the chai pani but with a Ganesh on them.  I just knew it'd be easy to find, but after about 4 days of many internet searches and a million different combinations of keywords, the only thing I came up with were vendors that sold with a minimum of 1000 pieces.  We couldn't really justify buying 1000 since we only needed 11 of them.  I did find some mini jute bags that were blank, so I made a promise I wasn't sure I could keep.  I told her I'd put the Ganesh on them myself. When I hung up the phone, I asked myself out loud, "Now, why'd you go and say a thing like that??" 

My friend sent me an image of the Ganesh she wanted and I pretended I knew what I was doing.  Since the image was so small and somewhat intricate (for it's size), I didn't want to hand cut it.  Instead, I used the Silhouette's trace feature to trace the outline of the image.  I say this very nonchalantly, but the trace feature was a discovery I made at about 1:00 am when I was desperate for a solution to the problem I volunteered myself for.  It is probably the most awesome discovery known to man.  Or at least to me.  I should go down in some crafty wall of fame somewhere.  Seriously.  It's that awesome.  I even woke up Mr. Bean to tell him. He didn't find it quite as awesome at the time, but once I finished everything, he was sure to pat himself on the back for getting me the Silhouette. 

I stole borrowed some transparencies from work, closed my eyes, and hit "cut" on the Silhouette.  And it worked.


I placed cardboard inside the bags and placed my stencil on top.  I taped the stencil down with painter's tape and just used a cheap sponge brush to dab the paint over the stencil.


We wanted to keep the bags simple, but you know my obsession with rhinestones by now, so it won't surprise you that I decided the bags needed some bling.


So, I added a rhinestone as the bindi.  Just stayin' classy, my friends.  


And here they are!  My friend's mom will see them tomorrow.  I hope she likes them.  I'm kind of hoping she doesn't because I kind of want to keep them.... A girl can never have enough small jute bags with a Ganesh painted on them, can she? 

5 comments:

Unknown said...

OMG. HOW ARE YOU SO AWESOME?

Anita said...

Just so you know, you're going to be making stenciled jute bags from now until forever, b/c NOBODY will able to get enough of them. BEAUTIFUL!!!

Sarah said...

We just wanna see ya paint that!
These are great!!

pintobean said...

Sarah, I'm glad you got my title. I was thinking the cool kids would..... ;)

Anita, thanks. :")

Shpatel2, was there ever any doubt? ;)

Unknown said...

I am really impressed by the work you did in this article. It’s great enough to pull my attention and in reading this article for once to understand that your pen is really mightier than the sword.
Canvas Bags