Tips for Placing a Tattoo Stencil

Materials You Need: 

We like Green Gold, especially if you’re making a stencil using thicker printer paper. Anchored and Stencil Stuff are also popular brands.

You’ll use this to prep the skin before putting the stencil primer down on the skin. Alcohol cleans the skin from all the oils, which helps the stencil stay longer throughout a tattoo. 

You can make a stencil using a pen and paper or with a stencil machine. This application process works for both.

You will also need razors, paper towels, and gloves. You want to make sure you are wearing gloves at all times.

How to Place a Stencil:

Grab your soap bottle and clean the area that you're about to lay the stencil on.

Use your razor to shave the area. When you're shaving, you want to make sure you're shaving enough that you can get a good picture when the tattoo is done. You don’t want a ton of hair hanging out in the background, because it really takes away from the actual tattoo.

Spray down the area with hand sanitizer or alcohol. What that's going to do is get rid of all of the oils on the skin to help the stencil stay better through the time of the tattoo.

Place your stencil on the skin to make sure you have the appropriate room. Make three or four little marks so you can get it all matched up perfectly to where you want to put the tattoo on the body. 

Sometimes, you’ll have a little bit of residual stencil stay on the skin right there. If this happens, just grab a little bit of alcohol again and wipe that clean.

After you wipe down with alcohol, grab your stencil applicator or your stencil primer. Most of the time, we recommend Green Gold. It works great for Neo Traditional designs. However, if there's a ton of really tiny lines in your stencil, we would recommend using Anchored.

You don't want to put it on thick. You want it just sticky enough without it being overpowering, because it'll smear everywhere.

Rub the primer in a little bit, making sure it gets to that sticky consistency.

When you put your stencil down, match up your lines and lay it down on the skin. Lightly press down on it and hold it there for a couple of seconds to make sure the full stencil is down on the skin.

From there, you can just peel the stencil off.

You can use a paper towel to pat down on the area to get all the residual stencil primer and the transfer ink off so it’s not clumped together, which would cause it to smear. 

Wait 15 minutes before you start tattooing so the stencil has time to dry completely.

Become a Tattoo Artist With the Artist Accelerator Program

Learning to pack color is an exciting step in your journey, but it can also be pretty eye-opening to how difficult tattooing can be. Without the right knowledge, it’s impossible to level up your skills and become a professional tattoo artist. 

However, finding the straight-forward information you need to progress is difficult. And with so much out there online, it’s hard to avoid picking up bad habits from incorrect and outdated resources.

This is one of the biggest struggles new tattooers face, and too many talented artists have given up their goal of getting into tattooing because of the years it would take to unlearn their bad habits. 

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Click here to learn more about the Artist Accelerator Program.