Avast!

A few weeks ago a package arrived from my Mum, amongst the goodies was several plain tees for my kids!! Which is actually a really cool gift, because I can play, woohoo!

I followed up the super hero theme that is prominent in our house at the moment, by printing Rio a tee with SD on it, from the Super Duck book we read.

Today I wanted to test out the sprayed bleach I have seen around on Pinterest. Scull and cross bone seamed simple enough. I googled the bleach to water ratio and found that it was about 1:3. I used an old cleaning liquid spray bottle. After cutting out my stencil from some light cardboard I put a little glue stick glue on the back just to hold it in place on the t-shirt.

Next, DO NOT FORGET put card board inside the shirt other wise you will bleach the front and back. It really only takes a couple of sprays. Then rinse the tee really well and wash it. I love using more than one medium so I added some screen printing to it. This was the simplest of stencils masking take boarder and then I cut out some letters. Finished project I give this 10 thumbs up I love it..even if I do say so myself.

Sew much fun

Well, since getting my second hand Serger I have been sewing when ever I can sneak down stairs. I have been enjoying making journal covers for gifts,  I really need to make one for myself too.
They look great in linen, Umbrella Fabrics (from Australia/home) is perfect! I buy a little $10 pack of scrapes and can probably get 3 or four out of it.

The project that followed the journals was my Otis Pants inspired by the Bonds pants (also from Australia). On our little holiday A. gave me some heavy jersey, it's dark green, super baby friendly but need to be personalized. Of course I printed on it. I liked this idea from Lil Blue Boo so I printed the stripes and then added the scull and cross bones, and I am in love with the our come!

Finally I made up one of these tee-necklaces. One t-shirt from the thrift store $2, scissors, needle and thread and a bit of time up your sleeve. I'm quite impressed with my creation, so much so I am sending my sister one, she is a fab sewer and super stylish.

hello..

Hi how's it going? It has been months since I posted last. Life got a little crazy, I got pregnant put our house on the market, went home to Australia for a 6 weeks, moved to the prairies, had a quiet Christmas then had bubba number two.

Turning the big 30 a couple of days ago prompted be to do more of what I love most. So after buying a plain sweater I thought it was a canvas I could not ignore. I had seen a shirt on I am Momma that inspired me, first of all I painted some tiny bubble wrap and simply pressed it down with my hands then I cute the 'M' stencil and screen printed it. I am really happy with the result.

a quiet week..

Yesterday my little man and I hit the thrift store for our weekly visit. Oh my, there was a lot of stuff in there this week. I picked up this plain purple tee, a summer jersey top and lots of flannel fabric, woohoo!
So what to do with an over sized tee to make it wearable?? First of all I rouched the side like the Green Tee I did in an earlier post, only this time I used elastic thread instead of actual elastic.. it seems to sit nicer. Then at craft night, I printed the pens around the neck line. I am on the fence about whether or not I will print one white pen somewhere there too...???

When I get a chance I will post a pic of me wearing it.

With so many friends pregnant at the moment, I should really get a wriggle on pressie wise.

This is the same soft fabric as my little man's baby blanket and the flower flannel was one of my (brand new) finds at the thrift store. The corner fabric, felt and ribbon are something for a little bub to play with. The blanket is 18" squared just big enough to fit in the car seat.
I really like it, I really needed to clear my head after the half an hour of madness before bed time.

just playing around

I was playing around with the idea of random shapes cut out of paper, as a starting point for a print. It turned into a fish bowl, which I really liked, of course a fish bowl needs a fish. I wasn't sure if the fish would be in or above the bowl so the bowl is a little low. Rather than printing I appliqued one on, next time I think I would print it. This is a another thrift store tee, lots of fun for only 75c.

This was inspired by a book of baby animals that I read to my little man repeatedly. I love this print! The only thing is doing really small holes with a craft knife in plastic is tricky. So for some reason I thought I'd try leaving them out of the stencil to worry about later. Not the best idea my practice tee worked better than the new tee, which had to be touched up. There is a tool I have seen for really small holes that I think is called a Japanese punch. If any body knows where I can get my hands on one let me know.

just for the practice

While my little man had a 2 and a half hour nap today (unheard of in our house) I decided to test out the stencils that I cut out at craft night yesterday. I like the stencils, but I really liked making craft night for the 3rd week in a row!!

I am trying to try doing some more floral-ish prints as everything I have printed lately has been for kids tees

The best part of the day though was when my bike trailer arrived at the front door. I am so excited to take it for a test run, it is a Burley Bee. I did a lot of online window shopping so I will let you know what I think of it. Must just say that it is one of the lightest weighing in at 19lbs, which will help for the hills as my little man is already 30lbs.

a week at a glance, part 1

Getting Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts in the mail yesterday, (gotta love birthday cash) was amazing even just a quick flick through left me thinking the woman is a genius and that I may never need another craft book ever again (wanting is another story).
I have watched my friend from Our Ilan & Quinn hand applique circles onto cushion covers and quilts but I've never tried it myself. Anyway seeing it again in Martha's book made me want to try it.

Not having any family close by and the penned in feeling I get in winter lead me to putting my little man in day care for an afternoon a week (he gets as much out of it as I do). So what do I do with myself for 4hrs... that's easy do something craft related. Today I ran a few errands first, which always means a leisurely look through the thrift store, where I bought this gray tee for a dollar.
Then I grabbed a few things from home and headed for fresh baked cookies at A's place, so this is what I put together... not bad for a 1st. Then just for extra detail I hand stitched with embroidery floss around the edge.

On Saturday to escape the sky falling down in my world I went to a local craft space (The Art Station) and just spread out some stuff and set about printing a few things, some new stencils & some old. Oh my goodness it was so relaxing.
Here's what I did, a pen (that I have since added too and will post soon) and the birds from a earlier post.

odds and ends

I have been doing some thinking about where to from here... and still not quite solidified my new direction. So I have made a few things to keep me busy. A practical laundry basket, an upcycled tee for Rio and just now a few prints.

I am really happy with these, Rio's tee is going to go into a competition over at I Am Momma and the prints are just for fun, patches for future projects I think.

5 days till the market

Nothing like an approaching deadline to get you moving. My husband is away and my little man is feeling better, which means I am well rested and I have my evening to create. Woohoo.

Today in nap time I did some practice printing (meaning none of the prints worked out), then cut this stencil after readying about a boy tee competition over at I Am Momma. This evening I set up my printing area with scraps or jersey fabric and a couple of items from the thrift store (I like using second hand tees as it's cost effective and I'm more adventurous).

For the competition I wanted to do something more interesting so I cut out a little fish that I had printed the same image on... I liked the idea, not sure if it worked.. then tried sewing the whole print on, not sure which one I will enter.


The top 2 I will definitely keep for Rio, the bottom one will go to the market.

Nap Time Crafts

My little man's head had barely even the pillow and I was setting up my printing stuff. I had seen an image of a deer with a lot of detail that I really liked so I just simplified it, so I could turn it into a stencil. I am really happy with the final image.

To do such a small print I used a small embroidery hoop with a sheer curtain as the mesh, it was so easy to do that I had put together the screen, cut the stencil and printed and cleaned up all while my little man was sleeping. can't beat that.


Perfect timing, I can hear him stirring now.

4 days away!!

So my friend Athena and I just got away, kid free for four days!! It was fantastic, we did a 2 and a half day course which was inspiring. Silk screen printing at ACAD in Calgary we built a screen then printed using a stencils and a screen with photo emulsion. I have worked with stencils before and then hand painted them, however using a screen allows you to reuse the stencil and the coating of paint is nice and even.
The instructor was great she really opened my eyes to the possibilities of stencils. I wasn't happy with the quality of photo emulsion image that I produced, my screen was the first screen so the timing with the ultraviolet light was a little off, as a result it was under exposed and started to wash off the screen. Stencils are more what I am interested in and are super easy to clean up after when you are working in a small space at home.

Of course we couldn't go to the Big Smoke and not do some shopping, I was happy to come home with a new dress, belt, shirt (which I printed on) and shoes, then something for my fellas, and finally Ikea for the house and a fun mirror for Rio with doors so he can play peeka boo with himself, so cute.

Here are some of the my favorite prints:
The Blue t-shirt is done with 1 stencil and blobs of 2 colours, pulling the squeegee down the screen makes this effect. The green t-shirt is actually 2 different stencils. This stencil was super quick, these weren't the best prints as one of the cars looks stripy, this was caused by putting newspaper over the print so I could print another one beside it before it had dried. The paint that had touched the newspaper dried differently from the paint that didn't, interesting effect. I didn't want to waste them so turned them into bean filled bookends.

My First

So this is my starting point for real screen printing. I had tried to get around using real screen printing procedures in the past as I have been intimidated by chemicals and damaging the screen if you leave paint on it for to long etc. I had tried an embroidery hoop with glue as a filler, but to be expected the results weren't that great.

So having learnt from those experiments here I am at the drawing fluid and filler method. The big key I found was the thickness of the screen printing paints.. I had been using thinner paints in my other attempts.

So for my Christmas gifts this year i bought cotton aprons (60% cotton was all i could find for a reasonable price) then I dyed them in hot water and several tea bags. there are some great clips on you tube about tea dying if your interested. Then I printed my image on the back of the apron and upside down so that when I folded the bottom up to create the pockets the image was upright. I am really happy with the final product.