Frequently Asked Questions

We'll cut and send a stencil to you for as little as $35 plus shipping for a two-layer stencil on a heavy-duty 11x14 mylar sheet. Things that add to the cost of your stencil are:

• additional layers (up to 8)
• larger image area (up to several feet across)
• more complex stencil types (like halftones, which have more cuts per area than standard stencils)

We currently support uploads of all standard image files, including

• PNG (.png)
• JPEG (.jpg or .jpeg)
• GIF (.gif) except for animated gifs
• SVG (.svg)
• WEBP (.png)
• TIFF (.tif or .tiff)

Some less standard images are not supported, and there are problems with OS-specific images sometimes.

• AVIF (.avif)
• ICO
• HEIC (.heif or .heic)

You can't upload video files.

You can crop and save the image on your phone, and when you save it to your phone that should fix the rotation problem. You don't need to rotate it, just crop it or make some other modification to it before saving it. Then use it as your Bay Stencil upload as before.

That means the file you uploaded to Bay Stencil was too large. Bay Stencil currently supports uploads of up to 10MB.

Did you check your spam folder? We do the best we can to maintain a sterling email reputation, but because our emails contain images we are still caught in some spam filters. If you don't want to look in your spam filter every time, just add our email address to your address book.

Your SVGs arrive by email with a zip file attachment. When the payment provider notifies us that you paid (which takes about two seconds), we unlock your download right away, after which you can request your download by email in a variety of configurations. If you don't immediately see that you can download your SVGs via the order page, you should definitely let us know.

We'll get right on it! It'll take 1-3 business days to process, and then (depending on your choice of shipping) will take between 2 and 10 business days to get to you. An exception: shipments to Australia and New Zealand often take as long as three weeks to arrive by standard delivery.

We ship your 14 x 11 stencils flat as a first-class letter, in a 12 x 15 envelope. If your mailbox will not accommodate an envelope of this size, consider having the stencil sent to a friend whose mailbox is big enough. Larger format stencils are shipped rolled up in a box, and will typically need to be hand-delivered.

We try to keep it simple, with a flat world-wide shipping option. Delivery to Australia, New Zealand and Asia generally will take longer than EU and North America. Sorry, we don't offer next-day delivery.

Shipping Type	Delivery Time	Price
Standard	4-10 business days	$10 Free on orders over 150
Express	2-4 business days	$40

A portrait is just an image of a face, and you convert the image to stencil just as you would any other image. The trick with a portrait stencil is to make sure your photo captures the most important features of the face in good contrast. Photos taken at angle from a single light source typically make good stencils.

Yes, you can make custom size orders through the site:

• Smaller Sizes: no problem down to about 5 inches on a side.
• Larger Sizes: multi-panel stencils up to 24 panels in total are available on the site

If you need something super big, we can cut your stencil from 18 x 24 inch panels, and ship them to you in a tube. Custom Materials (like metal or acrylic): this will get a little trickier (and a lot more expensive!), but we'll try to connect you with the right partner for your job. Contact us

You can request a custom download in almost any size.

1. Visit the Order Page for the stencil you want to download
2. Click 'Custom Download' button
3. Choose the desired size of the final image you want to produce
4. Select the size of the cut medium (size of your panels)
5. The number of panels in each row and column will be calculated for you
6. Click 'Download'

In the custom download popup, red lines over the image illustrate how your image is divided up into panels.

For those who like numbers, here's an example. If you want your painted image to be 20 inches high, and the image is 4 x 5 aspect ratio, then your final image would be 20 in x 25 in. Let's say your stencil media is 10 in x 12 in, and you want a minimum 0.5 inch margin (a border around the edge of the stencil that contains no holes). Then the Stencilizer divides your image up into 3 rows of 2 panels each. Each panel will contain 1/2 of the total width of the image, and 1/3 of the total height. So each panel will contain a 10" x 8.33" 'chunk' of your image, on a 12" x 10" panel.

Still confused? Try it out--it's easier than you think to get the perfect multi-panel stencil. All you need to know is how big you want the final image to be, and how big your panels are.

Afraid not. It's pretty likely that you would leave something out of the instructions for how you want it cut, or that the thing you want cut would fall apart in the laser cutter. If you can't get an image to stencilize the way you like, contact us for help.

Don't worry. When you buy the digital download, you can come back to the order page (the link is in the email that we sent you when you bought the download) as often as you like to customize your download again and again. You can change the size of your stencil, the number of panels it contains, the bridge width. So don't worry about getting it right the first time.

The pictures you upload are converted to stencils and then stored for you to look at for between one week and one month. Then they are deleted from the service after we notify you. Your photos never leave Bay Stencil.

(See above.) Your images and their stencils are stored for a period of time before they are deleted. If you want your stenciled image to be always available, you should save it somewhere else.

A stencil has to be connected or it falls apart. Bridges hold those islands in place. One island can require three or even more bridges to keep it in place. Bridges also keep unstable areas from flopping out of place while you place and paint the stencil.

You can choose how 'bridge-y' we make your stencils:

• Stable bridges: the most bridges, the most stable
• Fewer bridges (recommended): good balance between stability and visual result
• One bridge per island: might be flimsy but everything is connected
• No bridges: use with an image that is already bridged

When you paint the stencil, the bridges mask the surface just like the rest of the stencil does. So you may see lines in the painted stencil that were not in the original image. Those unpainted lines can be filled in with the same color as the color you used to paint the stencil. You can also carefully remove extra bridges. It's 100 times easier to remove a bridge than it is to add one.

The best way to handle this is to crop your image so that as little background as possible is included. Then tick the box for 'remove background' when you're uploading. Keep in mind what the pros say about how to work with the surface color.

SRSLY? Okay, a stencil is a template made by cutting a design into stiff paper, plastic, cardboard, or metal. You use a stencil to apply a design to a surface by spraying or brushing paint through the cut out areas of a template so that the pattern will be reproduced on the surface below. Easy peasy. Maybe you should start here.

Great question! Fundamentally, it's a three step process. First the large variety of colors in the image are reduced to a small number of colors. Second, the smaller shapes are combined into larger shapes that form (typically) smooth curves. Finally, the curves of each color are separated out, and islands are bridged strategically so that they can be cut and painted as individual layers.

Vector image files are used as inputs to Lightburn on a PC that is connected to a laser cutter instead of a printer. Laser cutters are cool. Imagine, your stencil cut out by an Imperial Stormtrooper!

Professional quality photographs make good stencils. Dramatically lit photos of cars and trucks make good stencils. If you want to take a picture of someone's face to make a stencil from, make sure the person's face is lit from the side so that shadows fall across the face and accentuate the best details of the face. We have lots of opinions about what subjects make good stencils.

If you can make a stencil in just two colors that's really tight, that's awesome. Many logos, high-quality (iconic) photographs and some simple artwork stencilizes well with two layers. Decent studio portraits often look very good with three layers. Three layers gives you light, dark and mid-tone (in between light and dark). You often see good three-tone stencils where one of the colors is omitted so that it's replaced by the color of the background. Four-color and five-color stencils are good for more detailed logos and ordinary photographs that need more colors to be recognizable. Multi-layer stencils can be harder to make crisp because there are more lines that have to match up perfectly. Even if the stencil is cut very precisely, variations in the surface can keep the layers from registering exactly right. Fewer layers means fewer opportunities to screw up. Often, three layers are better than five layers.

Part of the beauty of stencils is that they can reduce the amount of detail until the image is more stylized than realistic. If you want maximum detail, however, you will notice that some of the stencil presets have more detail than others.

Some details are very small and won't be picked up by the stencil maker. For example, the tiny dot of reflected light in the eye is sometimes discarded as too small a detail. If you want to control these details, you can crop the image more closely so that those details will be considered relatively more important. You can also use a program like Adobe Illustrator to manually trace the 'important' details of the stencil, and make them larger. Read more about how much detail to include in stencils.

They are made of 7 mil mylar. A mil is one thousandth of an inch. This material is thicker than architectural tracing paper, and thicker than a one-time use frisket; and it's durable enough that it won't tear with normal use. It's stiff enough to keep flat when pressed against a flat surface, but it is not rigid. The bridges that hold the stencil together also serve to keep pieces from bending or flopping out while you're painting.

It depends on what you put on it. If you intend to use the stencil 5 or 10 times, it's probably best not to clean it at all. If you want to use it 100 times, then you need to clean it periodically, and before any buildup occurs. Water-based paints clean up with hot soapy water. Soak the stencils in a flat bath, and use a brush to clean off any buildup on the edges. (It's the edges primarily, not the flat surfaces, that need to be kept free of paint buildup.)

For most spray painting applications, there is very little buildup because the surface catches the paint rather than the edges. If you intend to use the stencil for spray painting, you can probably use it 30 times without cleaning it at all. But if you want to be able to use it more often than that, you'll probably need to start cleaning it with acetone after the first use. (It's possible to clean the stencil even after it's had extensive buildup, but it may take alternating soaks and brushings to clean it at that point.)

Get the full story on how to clean your stencils.

Several options:

• If you can orient the surface horizontally or almost horizontally, then the stencil should lay flatter from gravity alone (I say almost horizontally because with spray paint, your spray loses pressure if you spray straight downward)
• In addition to laying the stencil almost horizontal, use coins as weights to hold the stencil down in places where it rises up.
• My favorite technique is to put a latex glove on one hand and push the stencil up against the surface while spraying. You can also use your hand at the same time to block the spray from hitting other areas where the stencil is not close to the surface. You can get really good at this technique over time.
• Want it perfect? Use quilt basting spray (or artist's adhesive) to tack the stencil to the surface. Then you'll have the paint and the adhesive to clean off of the stencil! :-) Seriously, the spray adhesive works multiple times and doesn't need to be removed if you're also not removing the paint. If you remove the paint each time you'll also be taking off the adhesive in most cases.

Yes, the stencils will bend around a curved surface like a cylinder, as long as it isn't too tight an arc. So it would work for sure on a curved interior wall or a column in a parking garage; but it wouldn't work on a basketball.

If you just let the stencil dry but never clean it after using, you can spray it probably 20 or 30 times before lint and dirt build up on the edges of the stencil in a noticeable way. If you clean the stencil every time you use it, with water or thinner (depending on the paint), the stencil should hold up indefinitely. Drying the stencil flat in a clean environment helps in either case.

Remember, the stencils don't have color. Only paint has color. Typically, you can take a stencil that was color-separated and paint it with shades of gray (black to white). Or you can take a stencil that was made in shades of gray and paint the layers in any colors you like. Experiment and have fun!

(Or, why do you cut four stencils when you only use three of them?, etc.)

The best stencil work draws in the color of the background and makes it part of the finished work. Sure, you could cover the entire surface with your three layers, but none of the colors in the stencil would be the background color, and it wouldn't look as cool.

Because you have a stencil for all three (or four or five) tones in the final image, you can choose the color surface you want to work on. Many stencils are reproduced with the color of the surface replacing either the lightest or the darkest layer. A balanced midtone surface like brick or asphalt works well when the stencil is three-color. In that case, you use the lightest and darkest stencils and leave out the midtone layer. For an illustrated example, check out this article on why you often leave out one layer when painting.

The closer you can get the stencil to lay flat against the surface as you are spraying, the cleaner the lines will be. If the surface itself is quite bumpy, you may not be able to reproduce the image as cleanly as you would on a flat surface. If the surface is pretty flat, then you may apply a small amount of spray mount (artists adhesive) to the surface before pressing the stencil onto the surface for painting. After each layer is painted, carefully remove the stencil from the surface so that it doesn’t tear at a weak point.

For sizes that are five feet and up, I recommend using a projector to project your design rather than applying a stencil to the wall. You can borrow or rent a projector for cheap, maybe $40. The basic steps:

1. darken the room (or, if you're outside, wait for it to get dark)
2. put the projector as far from the wall as you can, centered on the wall where you want to produce the design
3. use the 'keystone' feature of the projector to ensure that the design is in correct proportion on the wall
4. project the image that shows all the colors (labeled something like '3.jpg' rather than '3-1.jpg'
5. pencil in the outlines of the various blocks, and pencil a code for the proper color of each block
6. keep a printed color copy of the stencilized image so that you can check it later against your pencil codings if you're not sure
7. build up the paint in each block as you work

You can scale this technique up to 20 feet or down to 2 feet. For larger surfaces you just need a brighter projector or a darker environment.

Really small stencils are problematic for two reasons:

• The bridges that hold the stencil together are about as small as they can be already. If the stencil is scaled down very much, the bridges may break while the stencil is being cut. (The cut itself has a thickness to it even if it is a freakin laser.)
• Any roughness of the surface you're stenciling onto can introduce inaccuracy. Small bumps cause the stencil to not lay flat against the surface, and when you spray or brush, paint gets under the stencil and your image becomes messy.

View the Buying Guides for one of those products:

• Digital Download Buying Guide
• Stencil Kit Buying Guide