Tag: bridges

How to Bridge a Stencil
I first started making stencils because I had a brand new laser cutter, and I wanted an excuse to watch the laser cut up a bunch of card stock. Without knowing too much about stencils, I used the ‘trace’ function of Adobe Illustrator to separate an image into light and dark. When I fed the…
Removing Extra Bridges from a Stencil
You paint a stencil with bridges in it, and everything is cool until you get to the darkest layer, and WOW—those bridges really stand out. They stand out because the surface under the bridge is white, and when you paint black next to white, the contrast is really distracting. Take this example of an image…
Filling In Gaps Left by Bridges
Most stencils need to have at least a few bridges. Without bridges, the islands in the stencil just fall out when you cut them. And when you paint a stencil with bridges, there are going to be gaps in the paint where the bridges were. You can address this by eliminating the bridges in the…