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Hello exceptionally talented modeling forum,

I'm about to start ripping on my fancy new airbrush kit. I've logged about a trillion hours on youtube videos so I figure I'm like Wesley Snipes in demolition man at this point.

Anyway - I'm looking for advice regarding stenciling. I'd love to do an awesome "shard camo" effect on my dakka jets, and figure those adhesive stencils are the way to go. My questions are:

Are they one shot deals? Or can you get a couple uses out of them? (I'm painting five of these suckers)

Can you just buy a sheet of the adhesive stuff and cut 'em yourself? What is that material called? I figure I could just use a steel ruler and exacto to make some shapes and slap 'em on there.

Thank you for your time and attention.

The material is called "masking sheet". It has a paper backing, you can run it through the printer, and it will cut with very sharp scissors or a scalpel on a cutting board.

I used it for the flames here:
http://i.imgur.com/2lEYJoV.jpg

Never used actual setencils for my models but looking at some pictures of the shard camo effect, you could probably get that effect with masking/painters tape. Just cut them in geometric paterns and overlay. I would do a trial run first but i'm pretty sure it would work out well.

I have used some of the Anarchy models one and really love how they handle. I heard Brush4Hire also makes a couple of interesting ones.

You can see what I did on some Warp Spiders here
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/650967.page

svep84 wrote:
Can you just buy a sheet of the adhesive stuff and cut 'em yourself? What is that material called? I figure I could just use a steel ruler and exacto to make some shapes and slap 'em on there.

If your shards are pretty simply then you could definitely just cut them with a knife.

People often use "frisket film" for masking. I haven't used it myself, but I've seen some great results achieved with it. Personally I've never had to mask anything overly complicated, so I usually just use masking tape. I just stick the tape to a cutting board and cut the shape I want. A low-tack painters tape works best, I like Tamiya tape but the strips are quite narrow so it may or may not be appropriate for what you want.

For shard camo, I'd just use masking tape from a DIY store. Just make sure you get the least sticky kind.

Cut it to shape and stick on. Quick & easy