Digital Stencil Crackle Paint Technique, Part 1

Recently, Julie published a great blog entry on using crackle paint with stencils. Then, CS Member Norma posted a question in the forum asking if this could be accomplished digitally. Since I love a challenge, I thought I’d try this using Club Scrap’s Blueprints Digital Kit. Like many things digital, there isn’t any one right way, but I’ll show you how I achieved a similar look.

Although this isn’t difficult to do, it does require quite a few steps, so I’m only going to cover two parts today - creating the stencil, and creating a crackle texture. My next post (appearing later this month) will cover how to create a layout similar to Julie’s.

CREATE A STENCIL

1. Open 0914BlueprintsCSD_Overlay7.png.

2. Select the Magic Wand tool in the Tool palette and set the tolerance to 35. Make sure ‘contiguous’ is not checked.

3. Click in an empty area of the overlay. If you’re having trouble distinguishing the blank areas, add a new white layer under the overlay layer.

4. Select -> Inverse to select the letters.

Notice the 'marching ants' - that's what you want to see!

5. Fill with Black.

Voila! You've created a stencil!

6. Delete the white layer you created in step 3.

7. Save this as 0914BlueprintsCSD_Stencil.png so you can use it whenever you’d like.

CREATE A CRACKLE TEXTURE

1. Create a new document about 8 inches by 6 inches, with a white background.

2. Open a texture stamp; I used 0311RakuCSD_StampGraphic04.png.

You can use any image with an interesting texture, but Raku is rather crackly!

3. Using the Marquee Tool, select the portion of the image that you want.

4. Drag that portion of the image to your new document.

5. Duplicate and tile the image, repeating as needed to fill the canvas.

As is, the repeat is quite obvious, but you won't notice it once it's applied.

6. Delete the white layer.

7. Merge the layers together and save the file.

That's all for now. Remember, these digital stencils and textures can be used for a variety of techniques, so if you've got a chance to play with them, you might come up with some neat results!

Visit again later this month, and we'll use the components we made to create a cool crackle stencil layout.

Get crackin', and I'll see you soon!

 -Ron