Make Your Own Stone & Brick Arch Stencils

My friend Lucy Foxworth of Paper Glitter Glue has just announced her Whimsical Fairy House Challenge where she will post 12 different designs from May 5th to May 16th. I have committed to making two of the designs, and the first one I finished designing I used stone arches on my model. I searched all over the internet for a stone arch stencil design that I could use, and finally gave up and made my own. Then while discussing my pattern with Cheryl, who often tests my patterns for me, she expressed an interest in making the arches out of brick instead of stone. Hence I have included a brick arch design.

The Stone & Brick Arch Stencils are the fifth stencils I have made and shared. The first was a Stretcher Bricks pattern or bond, which is the most common of all brick patterns, while the 3rd was a French Bond, a rather unusual brick pattern. The second stencil was for a Stacked Stone Chimney. The fourth stencil was for a Stacked Stone Wall.

The Stone Arch Stencil is designed to work with the Stone Clock House Stencil that you can find for free on Lucy’s website. I reduced the size of her stencil to be 65% of the original size (the 1″ square included with the stencil now reads .65″ x .65″.)

The Brick Arch Stencil is designed to work with the Stretcher Brick Stencil that you can find for free on my website.

How To Make Your Own Stone & Brick Arch Stencils

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Materials to Make a Stencil

My free Stone & Brick Arch Stencil Patterns from the A Cottage in the Forest Library. Design #85. Get the password for free by filling out the form at the bottom of this page
Blank Stencil Sheets for the stencil. These are a 4 mil milky white and are very easy to cut with just a regular fine point blade. Use a new/ sharp blade. They also come in 12″ x 12″ stencil blank from this company, but they sometimes go out of stock. The larger size cuts just the same.
A Cutting Machine like a Cricut Maker or Cricut Explore.
Sticky Green Mat. It is important that the mat be sticky. If the stencil can lift up from the mat at all it will not cut correctly. It is not enough to just tape down the edges. I have bought several different mats off of Amazon, and I like the quality of this company the best.

How To Make The Stone & Brick Arch Stencils

Download the Stone & Brick Arch Stencil Patterns

Download the Stone & Brick Arch Stencil Patterns from A Cottage in the Forest Library. It is design #85. Don’t forget to unzip it. The pattern is available in three formats – as a SVG (scalable vector graphics), a DXF (drawing eXchange format), and as a Studio3 file. I don’t provide a PDF for this pattern as you would not want to try to cut it out by hand. If there is enough interest, I could add stencils to my shop for people who don’t have a cutting machine.

Import the Stone & Brick Arch Stencil Patterns into Design Software. I used to import the stencil ready to cut, and then I realized that limited you to making the stencil the height and width I made it. You may want to make your stencil wider and shorter, or change it to a different scale.

Once the Stone or Brick Arch Stencil Pattern is uploaded into your software, check to make sure the pink 1″ square equals 1″, then delete it. From your shapes menu, select the square and make it at least 1/2″ taller and wider than you want your stencil. For each of my stencils I made my rectangles 2″ x 5 1/2″.

Compare the stencil pattern to your rectangle and decide if you need to make any adjustments. I spread my arches out a bit vertically, centered all 3 of them, then highlighted all three and clicked COMBINE > WELD.

Place the welded result over your rectangle, highlight both, click ALIGN > CENTER, and then click SLICE. Delete all of the excess slice pieces until you have your final stencil. You can now rename your slice result Stone or Brick Arch. If you ever want to make another stencil using the same Stone & Brick Arch Stencil patterns in a different size, you have the Stone & Brick Arch Stencil patterns in your upload library and can follow the steps to make a new stencil.

For the Stencil:

Cut your stencil out of the stencil material. For my Cricut Maker, I used a sticky green mat, the 4 mil Stencil setting with more pressure, and a newish blade. If you use a duller blade not every piece may cut through completely. Usually if you push a piece with a pin tool towards the back, it will snap out, but you may need to wiggle a few of them several times. Remember, if your machine doesn’t cut through completely on the first pass, do not unload the mat, but instead hit the GO button again and it will cut over the previous cut lines a 2nd time.

Using the Stencil:

I use Ranger Distress Grit Paste for all of my stonework as it gives it a realistic rough stone look. I have a detailed tutorial regarding stenciling using a mask at the Marques Tower tutorial.

That’s it! Enjoy adding this new stacked stone wall pattern to the buildings in your Holiday Village! I would love to see pictures of your village made using my Stone & Brick Arch Stencils. Please share a photo of it with me by emailing me at Jackie@acottageintheforest.com.