Stenciling on ice lanterns

Stenciling with ice -- an advanced technique

It is not easy to produce stenciled designs on ice lanterns, but it can yield beautiful results.

Stenciled designs add another dimension to ice lanterns

In 2014-2015, very cold weather made it possible to experiment with stenciling designs in water onto ice lanterns.  This requires temperatures below about 11 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 12 Celsius) and actually works best when it's even colder.  Everything needs to be chilled -- the ice lanterns, the stencils, the roller, and the water.

Stencil designs with uniform small open areas are better for this than ones with large or varied openings.  

A miniature paint roller picks up cold
water from a shallow dish.  The far faces
of this Arctic Ice Lantern are already done,
while the flexible plastic stencil adheres
to the face above the roller after being
coated with water.  After a few seconds
to let the design freeze in place, the
stencil is peeled away.

The foam paint roller picks up chilled water from a shallow dish and is rolled upward from the bottom of the stencil toward the top as the stencil is held in place by hand.  As soon as the water touches the cold face of the ice lantern, it begins to freeze, and the stencil will remain in place while additional layers of water are applied, covering the whole area.  Some stencils are thinner and more flexible than others, which is advantageous for covering a surface that may not be entirely flat and even.

In this case, the stenciled ice lantern is
being used as a base for a globe luminary.

A very subtle snowflake design that didn't last long
on the ice lantern and wasn't easy to see from a
distance, but was lovely from close up.

Applying a snowflake stencil. This
design is on a more rigid plastic and
is harder to use than the softer
material of some of the others.

The rose pattern had areas that were large
and hard to fill evenly.  Without adding color
it was too subtle to be seen easily.

Despite the difficulty of applying the rose design
the end result was lovely when lit at night.

Especially difficult was this bee and
honeycomb design with large open
areas that tended to "run"

Here's one that I made with stenciled monarch butterflies, one of our summer passions.

Monarch butterflies stenciled on
an ice luminary.

Select simple designs, use flexible stencils, and work in very cold conditions, and you can produce beautiful stenciled ice lanterns.



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