Design Your Own

I used to have a screen printer, it scared the crap outta me.  I sold it on craigslist with a shit ton of accessories for an ungodly low price.  Now I just paint on my clothes with quality textile paint, they're one of a kind, they usually turn out pretty cool, and I love them.  The downside, of course, is the bumpy uneven surface of the shirt, not the smooth surface of a screen printer.

Most of the time I'll just freehand my design on a piece of paper with marker (I like the way marker writes, it's fat and smooth, unlike a super sharp pen).  But you can just as easily print out something you like and use these instructions accordingly.  This post is a little tutorial on painting an owl (or whatever floats your boat) on a knit t-shirt.

If you've read my layered shirt blog post, you know my love for knit fabric (I farking hate it), painting on knit is much easier than cutting and sewing it though.  Here's what you'll need:

• T-shirt or what ever you want to paint on.
• A design 
• Exacto knife
• Cutting board
•  Marker-washable marker if you don't want an outline/permanent if you do.
• Paint brushes
• Fabric paint (I  use Jacquard Textile Paint  It's quality paint with out paying an arm and a leg)

 If you can, wash and dry your shirt, don't use fabric softener or dryer sheets.  If you can't wash and dry your shirt, that's okay too.
Place your image on the cutting board and use your exacto knife to knock out the parts of the image you DO NOT want on your piece.








Place the paper on your shirt and trace the image knockout on your shirt with mark
Paint the image the way you want it.  

Let the paint dry and follow the directions on the paint bottle for "setting" the image (for Jacquard you'll heat set, using and iron)

Canvas Art

I was meandering around pinterest one day and to my luck, I ran across Brassy Apple Blog.  What a creative lady!  I found this tutorial on canvas art and thought that is was a fantastic idea, that I needed to try.

So I did, with my favorite mantra EVERYONE DIES. NOT EVERYONE LIVES.  When I originally did this, I used a straight canvas, not a fabric covered canvas.  Here is my tutorial on canvas art using contact paper and an exacto knife.

What you'll need:

• Canvas
• Fabric
• Glue (I used extreme glue stick)
• exacto knife
• contact paper 
• spray paint

First pick your canvas size, I used 16x20 for this project.

Then you'll need to pick out a fabric pattern.  I used this pink floral design from a 2 yd/pack at walmart.  I can make FOUR 16x20 canvas' with 1 yard of fabric.  Before securing your fabric, make sure you press it, or you may have fold lines.

Turn your canvas over  onto the wrong side of your fabric and use a staple gun to secure the fabric to the canvas.

Brassy Apple suggests using a cricut machine, but I don't have one, so I just printed a type from Illustrator, glued it onto contact paper, then cut it out with an exacto knife.  Be sure to glue your letters onto the RIGHT side of the contact paper, or your letters will be backwards when you stick them onto the canvas/fabric.

After you cut your letter out of the contact paper (this will take a while, you'll need to go pretty slowly to accurately cut the letters), place them on the canvas where you want them, then peel the backing off each letter and stick it to your canvas.

YOU'RE ALMOST FINISHED!  

Use a bottle of spray paint to paint over the letters and canvas.  You may need two coats of paint.

After a few coats of paint, my fabric pattern was still showing through.  So here is a GREAT TIP to take with you.  USE DARK PAINT, I thought the burgundy would be dark enough, but, alas....it is not.

Viola!  Not what I expected, but still pretty cool, and I think my mom is gonna LOVE IT!  

I added a black outline around all the letters, so they stand out a bit more: