Playing with Paint Sticks

Above, my birthday gift to myself - a set of iridescent paint sticks, stencil brushes and brush cleaner - along with a photo copy of an hibiscus that I outlined with a Sharpie. I traced the hibiscus onto freezer paper and then cut it out (a painstaking process but hopefully worth it). Below is a photo of the stencil ironed to my fabric as I am stenciling.

Below is what I ended up with. I used silver as a base color but it looks more gray to me, at least on this fabric. On top of the silver/gray I used a green on the leaves and a dark blue on the flower.
The image is now curing (i.e. hanging on my design wall drying). The directions say to let it cure 3 to 7 days, depending on how heavily you applied the paint. I think I put it on pretty light so I think I'll wait until Thursday or Friday (3 or 4 days) before proceeding. The next step is to heat set the image by pressing it with a hot iron. Then I am going to quilt this somehow.

So far I have learned: (1) I need to test the paints on a corner of the fabric to see what they will look like before using them on my image; (2) the cutting out process of the stencil is not fun and takes as long or longer than the painting process; (3) cleaning the brushes is also time consuming so painting several pieces at the same time would be a better use of my time (and I may need more stencil brushes for this).

I think this was a good investment. It's a way to create custom fabric and is not as messy or time consuming as dying fabric.