Freezer Paper er... Contact Paper stenciling

I have wanted to try Freezer paper stenciling for a while now but haven't wanted to spend the money on getting a roll of freezer paper from the US only to have it not work out.

I have searched and searched and as far as I can tell, freezer paper is not available in Australia unless you are paying $20 or so for a roll - that is too much money to spend on something that may or may not work out!

So I have been thinking and thinking about how I could do it using something as an alternative to Freezer Paper.
 I even Googled it - and nothing (however I am not very good at good Google searches!).

I was thinking about it again the other night and I thought about the principle behind the whole process of freezer paper stenciling - the waxed paper sticks to the fabric and therefore doesn't slide around when you put the paint on.

I thought to myself - what else would do this?

I came up with Contact - the stuff you use to cover books with. It has a paper side that you can draw a pattern onto, and a sticky side that you can adhere to the fabric - and it is cheap enough that if it doesn't work then - oh well!

So yesterday I gave it a go - and guess what? It works!

I'm sure my technique needs a little bit of work and that I may need to concentrate on really sticking down the edges of the design but hey - it is better than nothing!

 

This was my trial run and as you can see it turned out OK! I did find that you have to stick to fairly small designs as the Contact paper can be a little tricky to lay down on the fabric but a little bit of lifting and re sticking did the job. So because it was so easy and the trial run went so well, I decided to venture onto stenciling onto a baby onesie. It was a little more difficult. The cotton rib fabric was harder to work with than the stiff cotton and I attempted a different design. It turned out looking a little 'homemade', rather than cute and crafty. I didn't remember to get a before shot. In remedy, however, I thought I would sew some fabric applique to the onesie and see if I could make it look better. Which I think I managed to achieve -

I am still thinking about whether I like the whole look of the freezer paper stenciling - perhaps I just need to do a few more and get more of a hang of it.