Tag: stencils

New Product Highlight: Color Wheel Stencils

Create fun by encouraging students to create personal color wheels! We like this activity because it can be simple or complex, with a good balance between structure that guides students and open-ended fun that fosters creativity.

Age: 4+
Duration: 15-30 minutes

Here are few ideas on how to use them:

Idea 1: Get familiar with colors by keeping it simple.

What you’ll need:

LET”S GET STARTED

Take a wheel Stencil of your Choice. Put it onto a paper. Start filing up the inner edges with your choice of Color. To get an attractive look, try different colors. You can use Crayons, Markers or Pencil Colors. Once you are done, take off the stencil and see how beautifully the patterns get transfer to the sheet!

Idea 2: Take your color wheels up a notch by adding texture.

What you’ll need:

Take a Wheel Stencil and place it onto a white paper. Place one of our R48250 Rubbing Plate underneath the white paper. The twist starts from here. Fill the first wheel pattern with color of your choice. Once you are done, take that rubbing plate out and switch it with another rubbing plate. Fill up all the patterns by using as many rubbing plates you want and you’ll see the difference.

Idea 3: Take your color diffusing projects in a more structured direction by incorporating the color wheel.

You’ll need:

Take a R15212 Color diffusing Paper and place a wheel stencil over it. Outline the wheel patterns with a chalk or with a white crayon. Now, place the diffusing paper on a no mess tray. Take Our R54466 Junior Paint Spritzers, fill the bottle with liquid water color paint and spritz out a fine mist of color. Use different colors to create different effects.

Let us know how you choose to use your Color Wheel Stencils! Have fun and get creative!
Visit our website https://roylco.com/shop/color-wheel-stencils/ for more information.

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Super Slick Craft Paper Wands

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Design beautiful shape wands out of Super Slick Craft Paper for fun events in your classroom! Kids can take the wands home or use them in the classroom to answer questions, as props in drama class or for general fun and games. 

Age: 4+

Duration: 15 minutes

Learning Objectives:  Exercise scissor skills. Develop beautiful wands through planning and design. Use wands for practical purposes in the classroom or as a decoration.

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You’ll Need:

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Pick out a favorite shape from the Silly Stencils pack. You get double stencils from one as the inside turns into a stencil too! Get a sheet of Super Slick Paper and trace the design onto the back of the paper (the white side).

The Silly Stencils are made to reflect three types of difficulty levels; the yellow colored stencils feature the easiest shapes to trace, the red stencils are medium difficulty, while the blue stencils have the most challenging designs to trace.

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Fold the sheet in half so that you cut out two opposite copies. Cut along your simple design.

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You will have two shapes of opposite sides. Place the two shapes together so that the white sides are facing inside. Make sure that all the edges line up nicely and trim off any excess.

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Tape the top of a drinking straw to the white side of a cutout. To make the straw more rigid, you can use straws from our Straws & Connectors!

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For a nice addition to the wand, add on a flourish of colorful ribbon! Cut a long length of ribbon and tie it in the middle to the straw. Curl the ends with the blunt edge of a pair of scissors.

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Tape or glue the second cutout to the opposite side of the wand. This will close up the project nicely!

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You can make a variety of different shapes! Vary the way you choose to curl the ribbon. You can choose to color code your wands for various activities in the classroom or simply allow students to make their individual designs as they wish.

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Paint Pad Leaf Prints

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Make delightful, colorful prints on the Paint Pad. The Paint Pad allows you to create multiple prints using combinations of textures and color on a unique gel-like surface!

Age: 4+

Duration: 10+ minutes

Learning Objectives: Learn to use multiple media to produce interesting colorful effects. Use fine motor skills to press down printing paper and to apply paint and materials to the pad. Discover the visual differences between positive and negative space. Discuss how certain materials affect the prints being made.

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You’ll Need:

• R54480 Paint Pad

• Tempera or acrylic paint

• Paint brush

• Printing sheets

• Stencils, textured paper

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The Paint Pad provides students with hours of fun and play! The gel-like surface is soft on hands and great for tactile exploration. Students can fingerpaint on it if they wish, but paint tends to glob up on the surface. In case of this happening, use thicker card sheets to draw up the paint better.

The Paint Pad comes with a tray for stability and easy cleanup, as well as a protective cover that can be overlain on the surface of the pad to be stored until another activity.

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We recommend spreading the paint with a sponge brayer or a thick bristle paintbrush. Cover the entire gel surface of the pad with paint.

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Add a second color to the first. In this canvas, we mixed in a bit of yellow to match the red background. Don’t completely mix the two colors, however. You will want to keep the streaks of paint that show up in between, as this adds more interesting effects to your prints later on.

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Place a stencil-like shape on top of the paint. You can use a found shape, such as the leaf we found above.

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Place a sheet of paper on top of the Paint Pad to cover the entire surface. Use the palms of your hands to smooth the paper out and pick up as much of the paint as possible.

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Grab the sheet of paper by the corners and slowly pull it up off the Paint Pad. You’ll feel it slightly stick to the paint as you peel it back. Just remember to go slowly and gently.

You can already see that the area around the leaf has been colored in while the center of the leaf is not. This created a negative space in the print, or an area of no color that exposes the background.

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At this point, you can make a second print! Carefully remove your stencil off the Paint Pad. Press another sheet of paper down onto the pad and smooth it out. Peel the paper back to reveal your second print.

As you can see in the image above, the leaf stencil left behind some markings that were picked up in the second print. You can see the edges of the leaf and the leaf veins that strike out from the center of the leaf imprint.

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We finished off with a third print like this one. Making multiple prints also helps to lift up most of the paint so you are in fact cleaning it as you go!

Tip: To clean any stains, use baby wipes or a bit of hand sanitizer and a paper towel for any dried-up paint.

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Craft Spotlight: Nature Stencils

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Use detailed Nature Stencils to draw beautiful pictures while developing fine motor skills and encouraging image association. Each shape has a coordinating border to add interest to students’ drawings.

The stencils kit features many different types of flora and fauna that can be used to discuss animal and plant ecology. Click on the link to view the product at our website!

Another great feature about the stencils is the size: large enough for little fingers to trace all the fine details without frustration. A good way to practice tracing is to use the specialized image border. By tracing along a straight plane, students will develop their own techniques for tracing and can apply those techniques to the more complicated images on the interior of the stencil.

The best part is that one stencil becomes a two-in-one. Pop out the interior of the stencil to duplicate the image that students can trace. As a result, while one student traces the interior of the stencil, or practices with the intricate border, an advanced student can grip the inner shape and trace without the need for extra support.

Use the traced outline as a guide for developing scissor skills! Cut out the resulting shape to make decorations for classroom walls. Check out our project video below!

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BIG IDEA: Sewing Stencils Quilt!

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Explore different fine motor techniques such as sewing and tracing with this BIG classroom project! Combine everyone’s artwork into one. Trace recognizable basic shapes using our Fine Motor Skills Stencils and learn a basic sewing method safely with our Plastic Lacing Needles. Check out more about the tutorial below!

Age: 4+

Duration: 20-30 minutes

You’ll Need:

• R5601 Plastic Lacing Needles

• R58620 Fine Motor Skills Silly Stencils

• Felt

• Yarn

• Marker

• Scissors

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The best part about our Plastic Lacing Needles is that they are rounded at the tip, which means that they are safe and easy to use with a variety of soft fabrics.

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You don’t need much material for this project. The goal of this activity is to encourage students to develop their fine motor skills while creating artwork that’s a part of a larger art piece: a classroom quilt!

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Provide your students with a variety of felt colors. Guide them to think about the scenes or shapes they want to trace onto their felt piece. In the photo above, I’ve decided to make a stormy scene using our raindrop, thunderbolt and bean-shaped stencils to make the clouds! Younger students can trace basic shapes in the stencils kit, such as squares and circles, if they wish.

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You will need to use markers to trace out the shapes. Using pencil will catch onto the felt threads and won’t create an imprint. If you would like students to practice their tracing before transferring their skills onto the felt piece, provide them with scrap paper to trace onto.

The Fine Motor Skills Silly Stencils are designed to help graduate your students from tracing basic shapes and objects to more complex designs. Yellow colored stencils in this set represent easier shapes to trace, such as triangles, squares and circles. Red stencils represent medium difficulty while the blue stencils feature the most complicated designs. You will see that in the following images, I’ve used mostly red and blue stencils. These are best to use when making “scenes” out of the images.

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Once you have traced out the images, get your Lacing Needle and yarn ready! You will use the traced images as guides for sewing.

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Widen the eye of the Lacing Needle to thread the yarn through.

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Make a rough estimate of how much yarn you will need for each traced part. Tie a knot at the very end of the length of yarn. Show your students how this will prevent the yarn from slipping through the felt when making a stitch.

Here’s an image of a basic stitch that I’m using in this project:

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This kind of stitch is called a running stitch. This means that you slide the needle and thread over and under the fabric in one continuous direction.

There are a variety of other stitches you can use to sew up the traced shapes! You can get older students to experiment with these types of stitches.

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BACKSTITCH: The backstitch is made by sliding the needle and thread over and under but instead of continuing the stitch forward, the needle and thread are pulled back into the previous hole before continuing forward. This stitch helps to secure the two pieces of fabric in place, or to repair a bad stitch.

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OVERCAST STITCH: You can use the above stitch to combine students’ felt projects together into one quilt-like wall mural. The overcast stitch is a series of stitched loops. Instead of passing the needle and thread straight to the next hole, the needle and thread are looped around the edge of the fabric and brought through the next hole on the underside of the fabric.

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Tip: The felt may be a bit stiff in some places, so you’ll need to maneuver the Lacing Needle through. The best technique to do is twist the point of the needle a little bit to the left then to the right to loosen the felt threads.

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Once your students’ stitched pieces are complete, attach them together into a large-scale quilt or tapestry mural! You can either tape the pieces together with scotch tape or sew them with thread. 

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Paint Bellows and Lace Circle Stencils

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Extending our exploration of Paint Bellows, I’ll show you how to use this unique painting tool to create beautiful stencil art combined with our Lace Circles! Read on for more details!


Age: 5-8

Duration: 10 minutes

You’ll Need:

• R5419 Paint Bellows

• R24910 Lace Circles

• Art paper

• Tempera paint

• Paint tray

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I recommend using card paper for the backing underneath the Lace Circle. Depending on what kind of paint you use, the splatter paint may seep through any weaker or thinner paper. You want to make sure that the art paper is strong enough to withstand the paint splatters.

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Fill the paint containers with a bit of water to make the paint easier to pick up in the Paint Bellows. Place the template or Lace Circle onto the card paper.

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Press all the air out of the Paint Bellow before inserting the spout into the paint. Release the hold on the Paint Bellow to allow it to draw in the paint. Next, aim the Paint Bellow slightly above the art paper and quickly press the back of the Paint Bellows chamber towards the spout and release. Redo this action several times to get a great stippled effect on the paper!

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I wanted to use two different colors to make the artwork more interesting, so I used red. Spritz the red paint over the template. Tip: You can also remove your template and place it in another position over the stippled blue paint, then spritz with red to give your artwork a bit of dimension.

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Remove your template to reveal a simple yet gorgeous piece of artwork underneath!

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Show us some of your artwork using the Paint Bellows! Send us photos of your students’ work to subscriber@roylco.ca for a chance to be featured in our next post!

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