Is thermal paper good for tattoo stencil?

Answer 1

Thermal copying paper is the industry standard in tattoo stenciling. You can make the stencil by hand or with a thermal copier. For this, you will take the sheet of thermal paper, remove the rice paper barrier between the top sheet and the Gelatin underneath. You will then either make a good copy of the original outlined sketch that you've made with a laserjet printer, place it between the two sheets, and then run it through the machine...and there you have a conventional machine made stencil. Or, you can do an outline of your art on tracing paper, and then lay this tracing sheet right on top of the gelatin sheet and then go over the lines with a pen which you will take all of the ink out of so it is simply a pointed tracing tool and then firmly push down while you are tracing, ensuring that you are getting as much of the gelatin on the sheet as possible. What also works good when you are doing them like this, is to place a fairly higher watt bulb lamp underneath a pane of glass that you will have your stencil paper on, and this will start to essentially melt the gelatin making the copying all the more rich and less problematic.