How to: Use a Heat Tool to Cut a Stencil

Recently, I acquired a new tool from Michaels. It is the Martha Stewart Crafts Multipurpose Heat Tool. And it's pretty great.

It looks like this in the packaging:

Ostensibly, you get this multipurpose tool in order to do fancy things for home decor projects (as it's part of the new Plaid MS Crafts paint line). But it had the magic words on the box: stencil cutting.

Um, hello. I like me some stencils. Also it has a cool craft iron-y thing for laser transfers and a pointy thing for drawing on leather and such.

It does not have a knife, as this tool from Walnut Hollow does (video per Scraptime). However, I found that the tiny pointy ends in the box still worked quite well, even for details.

I made a video about it that shows you how I made my own stencils using some acetate packaging. Please excuse the rambling and bad camera work. I'm learning as I go. :)


How To: use a heat tool to cut stencils from christinaclouse on Vimeo.

Chevron stencil was inspired by Julie Fei Fan Balzer, in this post.

Also, bonus for stencil lovers, she's doing a free class called Stencil 101 and it's rad. Check out her blog here for more details.

And this is a layout I literally threw together from scraps on my desk, using one of the misted papers from the video:

You can almost see the tiny misted houses.
(Yes, I'm still working on my white space issues.)

So to recap:

Pros:

• Multiple tool tips in one tool
• Cord has on/off switch
• Has handy storage case

Cons:

• Does not come with replacement tips, not sure where to buy them
• Does not have a knife blade
• Provided stand is sort of flimsy.
• Really really hurts when you burn yourself

Hope you enjoyed the how to and the tutorial.

More to come. :)