Lemon Juice and Stencils

After getting this idea from my friend Mary Ann Russo. I gave it a try with my stencils... 

Above:  one of the finished prints using my stencil Borders 1.

I started with a shallow basin of lemon juice -- I used an expired bottle of Joe's Key West Lemon Juice.  (In my refrigerator, it's easy to find expired condiments ... just reach all the way to the back.)

Above:  The stencil afloat in a basin of lemon juice.

I tipped the basin back and forth to make sure the stencil was coming into full contact with the juice.  Then I pulled up the stencil, let it drip excess juice, and placed it onto a sheet of vintage paper that already had foxing along its edges.  See below:

I lightly pressed a finger alongside the two edges of the stencil to make sure it came into full contact with the vintage paper.  Then I lifted off the stencil and set aside the paper to dry.

After it dried, the last step was to heat the surface with an iron.  (I also tried a heat gun but it didn't work well for me.)  I used a specialized iron made for crafters (see below) but a dedicated household iron would work fine.  I used the hottest setting on my crafters' iron, but with a household iron (dedicated to crafts only), I would experiment with dry settings, starting with low heat to be on the safe side, and gradually increasing heat till the results began to show.  It's a simple matter of slightly scorching the dried lemon juice to make the design become visible.  Prior to being heated, it's nearly invisible.

 

The above prints show the variety that results from using this technique.  Each print is unique, altho the differences are subtle.

 Borders 1  stencil looks like this before its three borders have been cut apart --

-- and it's one of three Borders series stencils I've designed, each containing three borders.  

To see all my stencils, please check here.

Thanks for visiting my blog today!