OOH! Look What’s New!
Joni Nettleship
I love a good stencil. Who doesn’t? They’re life-savers at busy events and can add a bit of wow to your everyday designs. I’ve blogged about stencils before but I wanted to introduce you to my new favourites (and I haven’t been paid to say this, as usual my blogs are truthful and objective) a range of easy to use and very facepainter-friendly ones called OOH stencils. Created by Clayton from Marvellous Masks (he’s also a mean balloon twister, check out Chi Twist) these are designed with little faces in mind. What I love is their circular and curved shape – no more moving your stencil around to get a flow going, these do it for you; the star semi-circular one can be used on its own for a super-fast design or as a final flourish to a floral. And look how easy it is to do a crown! The circular mermaid is fantastic, the scales are the right size for both kid and adult faces (don’t ask me how) and you don’t need to move the stencil to add scales around the eyes so no more stencil wiping or smudging because crown and both eyes can be done in one go. You can even use more than one colour on each stencil as they are big enough to keep the colours separate and clean but not too large to swamp the face.
The other great thing about these circular stencils is that you can flip some of them over, for example flip your double jumping dolphins and you have a shell, the beauty is you don’t have to use two stencils and they are far enough apart not to smudge into each other – I hate a cramped stencil that does that. I always lose my finger daubers and the sponges I use often pick up an unwanted part of a small stencil. Aaaarrrghhh! These really do solve that problem.
So far I’ve only tested the star, mermaid and dolphin but there are many more including truck tracks and truck and monster horns, all semi- circular with eye designs in mind, or circular for forehead and eyes. I hear there are more coming soon. Give them a go and post your designs, I’d love to see them.
All stencils can be broght from – www.thefacepaintingshop.com