I have been wanting to try stamping on fabric for a little while now. I quite like to funky-up {read stuff up} Ava's nursery t-shirts...making them fun for her to wear...knowing that I attacked them with much love so that she is covered with my love all day long. Anyhow, I eventually bought some fabric stamp pads and first tried them on
this bag-lette.
Well, today Ava helped me stamp on a -not so- white (and rather wrinkled) nursery t-shirt. It is a messy job and has her little finger prints all over it. But, she loves it and is sleeping in it tonight.
I did the orange butterflies and the most of the darker pink ones...the rest is all her doing.
We used Versa Craft stamps in Cherry Pink and Tangerine. Yes, I know that my stamp lids are all wrong and that the blue lid is on the pink stamp. The stamps were little butterfly rubbers. Is that wrong? Should I rather say "erasers"?
We slid a piece of paper inside the shirt, just in case the ink bled through. It didn't. And went wild stamping. I tried to get Ava to coat the butterfly nicely in ink, but that didn't happen! A nicely coated stamp gives a lovely bright and bold colour. A less coated stamp gives a faded print. Both are lovely and it gives some nice texture to the colours.
The controller in me could only take so much mucky printing, so we only stamped one side of the t-shirt. Besides, it takes time for the ink to dry and 'we' were getting impatient to wear the shirt.
Once the ink is dry, you will need to iron the fabric to set the ink. I would highly recommend using a piece of scrap fabric between your hot iron and your art work...to save your iron from turning orangey-pink, like mine did! Saying that, the colours didn't seem to stick for long and wiped off easily on to my scrap fabric - once I had decided that was the better way to go...
One little person was very happy to put a warmly ironed t-shirt on.
My photo allowance expired after one photo, so this one is blurry...sorry. 'We' are pointing to our favourite butterfly.
See the parcel over Ava's shoulder? That is a brown paper bag stamped with blue and green hearts and dots. The colours are lovely and vibrant, just like on the t-shirt.
When this shirt has been washed I will update this post with a picture to show how well the ink washes. I haven't washed this ink before, so am very interested to see how well it holds.
Not being able to leave anything alone, I might just get the laundry marker pen out and draw feelers on to some of the butterflies...
*************************************************
Edited: Have a looky
here for the update
