Commercial Shapes
If you visit Michaels Arts and Crafts, you can buy different shapes that are cut from thin wood. These shapes are typically painted and then used in various arts and craft projects.
Styrofoam or wood shapes made by you!
Using the shape/path files that you download and a CNC machine allows you to make unique shapes. You can also scale the shapes to any required size. The picture shows some shapes that I cut out of styrofoam. I only have a home built CNC hot wire foam cutter, but with a real CNC machine one could easily cut wood shapes like those that can be purchased.
Custom Painting Stencil
Here I cut a pirate cat out of styrofoam to use as a stencil for painting. The pirate cat artwork had cut outs for the eyes that had to be held in place for the stencil to work properly. I used small pieces of electrical wire which I glued to the eye cut outs to hold them in place while painting. Next I attached the small styrofoam cut out to a larger piece of paper to protect the surrounding surface from getting paint on it.
One side note, the spray paint reacted with the styrofoam and the surface of the styrofoam is slightly melted.
One side note, the spray paint reacted with the styrofoam and the surface of the styrofoam is slightly melted.
Stencil Results
The results were not perfect. First I put the paint on too heavy, causing it to drip. Second, the stencil was taped to the object to be painted and I painted against a vertical surface, which I believe left the stencil loose to the surface. This in turn caused the edges of the image to become blurred.