Put hot glue on baking parchment and wait until it dries. The next step? Brilliant!

Every hobbyist knows the importance of a hot glue gun. You can use it to glue together pretty much anything — even those tricky angles where other adhesives fail. But there’s more potential hiding away in your hot glue gun. Now you can effortlessly make stencils to decorate your walls or photos!

You will need:

baking parchment
craft mat
hot glue gun
paper
spray bottle
acrylic paint
water

Here’s how:

Lay a piece of baking parchment on a craft mat. This way, the heat of your glue gun will not cause any damage to the surface you are working on.

Now, either using a pattern or listening to your impulses, draw a design on the baking parchment using the glue gun. It’s important that all parts of the design are connected.

Let your imagination go wild! You can choose abstract patterns or, as shown here, flowers.

You can also place a pattern under the transparent baking parchment and trace it.

After drying, pull the glue design gently from the baking parchment. Larger designs can be tricky. The thicker the glue, the more stable the stencil.

Now lay your glue stencil on a sheet of paper.

In a spray bottle, mix the acrylic paint with plenty of water and spray your design.

Now, if you carefully remove the stencil…

…your design is revealed! Beautiful!

Using this method, you can also decorate your walls! But make sure the paint is not too thin, otherwise it may run.

Or you can design your very own custom greeting cards! Don’t forget to wash your stencil after using it. This way, you’ll avoid a mess the next time you use it.