Celia Coulter

Lady Sorrow has been selected to join the other fantastic t-shirt designs for Womanly on a giant clothes line as part of the Manly Arts Festival in New South Wales on Sunday 27 September.

I wanted to try printing my own shirt for this, and with limited time to prepare an entry, I decided to jump in with two feet and try a hand rolled stencil.

I attempted to cut a paper stencil, but had a bit of trouble with a couple of floating sections – the points of the eyes, the ears, the face and the space between neck and hair. I realised I would probably need to do a double layer stencil.

Being particularly lazy, I wasn’t looking forward to trying to line up the layers :)

Fortunately had a lightbulb moment and decided to try photocopying lady sorrow onto an A4 lazer sticker.

I then cut the stencil out with my scalpel, stuck the sticky paper to the t-shirt (which had cardboard inside it to stretch it flat and stop leakage) , crossed my fingers and started rolling silk screen printing ink on with a foam roller.

It worked really well. Not bad for my first attempt at stencilling a t-shirt!!

Only disadvantage is you get one print only.

So limited edition of 1 will be heading to Manly Beach on a blue, size 10 t-shirt. Hopefully someone will want to buy her on the day!!

Feel free everyone to use my easy sticker technique yourself. And a tip for stencil cutting – if you cut a bit too much just use a bit of tape on it and recut the area.