I've said it before but south Georgia heat and humidity is a beast, sometime even way into the winter.  I treat all my outside projects like they will be used in the middle of July.  After much experimentation I have come up with a method that's effective and fairly fast.  Please note I do these in batches.  This particular session I had 5 Georgia shapes, 2 mason jars and 2 back of trucks, all of which were at least 24" at their longest length.

Step 1.  Clean the boards.  I only use a dry paper towel to dust each piece especially edges and crannies.  If I was outside I would use compressed air but I'm working out of a spare room in the back.  Dry clean I would not spray or use any damp method MDF will quickly absorb any liquids.

Step 2.  Roll on primer.  I'm using Kilz All Purpose here but any latex primer will work.  I bought both the primer and the mini rollers on the same aisle at Walmart.  Here in the sticks where I live our Walmart is circumcised compared to all the wonderful Super Walmart's out there so if we have it its safe to say all Walmart have them.

Common newbie questions:
"what do I do now", "do I seal it?", "how?", "how do I hang it" etc etc etc... I'll try to break down my process and hopefully answer these plus a few extra tips.
FYI my knowledge is from a combination of experience in painting on a range of material and working in custom framing while in college.

Here's my Snazzy Gingerbread waiting to go hang out on someone's door.  I started this process by checking to see if I needed to fix anything.  I like to wait a day or two from finishing the actual painting and then come back with fresh eyes.  Which is when I noticed his eyes needed to be touched up.  I had used a marker to out line and it didn't blend in well with the paint so I used my darkest black and repainted the eyes and mouth.  
Tip #1 Not all paint colors are created equal....
They vary due to brand, type, name etc... Mars Black and Ivory black are the two most common names I've seen but recently I've found a permanent Black in Master's touch acrylic line (Hobby Lobby's house brand) that is way dark.  New favorite.

I also touched up the edges were the primer was showing.  I'll show later in another blog post how I start the door hangers.  They come to me as plain MDF cutouts.  I coat the backs and edges first with a special black paint and then roll on a primer on the fronts.  My goal is to seal the MDF as well as possible since its so vulnerable to moisture.  I only touch up the edges were the front is dark so I did not go around the hat.  Why not the whole thing?  Because I'm prone to booboos and the red and white hat is not as forgiving as the rest of the gingerbread man. 

The first time I did a stencil on a door hanger it was awful.  

It was a gorgeous mason jar hanger.  It WAS painted and airbrushed to perfection.  I was in love.  I had left over cheap vinyl and used my cameo to cut the stencil.  When I started to peel the vinyl off not only did I have bleeds... it lifted in little spots allllll over.

So I tried to order some Oracal Stencil Vinyl but there was several different types.  I wanted a low tack stencil I could use on door hangers but since I airbrush I wanted it to be flexible enough I could use it on non flat surfaces.  Sometime Stencil material is stiff or plastic like which would not have as many uses for me personally.

​I ended up with an off brand Masking Film from amazon that has been fairly reliable.  It was a blind buy but I was lucky this time.

I made up a design using the Silhouette Studio and cut with my older Cameo 2.  Easy so far.
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Next I cut out some contact paper the size of my stencil.