To me, a laser cutter sounds like overkill for cutting stencil paper - have a look at http://www.rolanddg.com/product/cutt...-24/index.html as a starting point. Of course, if you're cutting brass or stainless steel sheet you'll probably need a laser cutter! I used to use a Roland DG CAMM-1 cutter which could produce small or large re-useable stencils from CorelDRAW v8/v10/v12 drawings, as well as cutting vinyl signage, which is what I mainly used it for.

I'm digging into my memory-banks now... I recall that the CorelDRAW files I made had to have zero-width lines for the Roland cutter to follow, and I think they had to be exported as .PLT files, the type used to drive an HP x-y plotter. Bitmaps are of no use at all to cutters as they need outlines. CorelDRAW had heaps of useful output file formats to use for just about any graphic purpose.

I seldom used bitmaps as a starting point, but it was a relatively straightforward procedure in CorelDRAW to manually trace a bitmap using layers, e.g. to reproduce a logo from a photo. Forget about auto-tracers too, you'll spend as long cleaning up their output as you would just doing it manually in the first place. You could also have a look at 2D CAD software in conjunction with a digitising tablet, e.g. Intuos. Note that I haven't done any cutting for many years - CorelDRAW v12 was the last version I bought and I haven't used the Roland cutter since then.

I also recall that Roland DG had their own software to use with their various plotters and cutters, and I think it was not cheap (but neither was CorelDRAW). I had a pretty good affinity with CorelDRAW from v3 onwards and my use of it was a 'work-around' I developed for my purposes which functioned well enough most of the time. Whether later versions of CorelDRAW than v12 have the same capabilities, I cannot say as I now use Xara DPX11, but not for cutting anything. My focus changed years ago.

Whatever software and hardware combination you choose will have to be suitable for the artistic and mechanical tasks ahead. Sorry, but if you are not clever with PC's it's going to be a very long, bumpy road and you'll need to find specific help and/or attend courses specific to your goal. Be prepared to spend a lot of money trying various combinations of software and hardware to achieve a working system you like and understand and that does not confine your artistic talent. Good luck with it.