Wrapping up Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring,
Not even a mouse.

Have a Merry Christmas all, and to all a good night!

Canvas Photo Album: Freezer Paper Stencil and Fabric Paint NYC Skyline

Idea and Inspiration:

I love that my family members are supporters and cheerleaders of my craft. My sister is probably one of my biggest. After she happily reported that her Kirby decal on her snowboard survived the weekend snowboard trip to Killington, she asked if I could make another decal for her coworkers going away present. They wanted an outline of the NY skyline affixed on the front of a photo album.

It sounded easy enough (under the condition that she provide the .svg file of the skyline) but then she came home with a canvas covered album. I pictured decals on a canvas album and wanted to cringe. It took a little convincing but she finally agreed to go with the recommendation of fabric paint rather than decals. Granted I haven’t tried the technique yet but I read about the freezer paper stencil technique on How About Orange a long time ago and figured it can’t go wrong.

Ingredients:

Tulip Soft Fabric Paint 1oz Matte Ebony
Freezer Paper

Images:

Artwork: How to Print on Wood

Idea:

D’s condo might be fully renovated and furnished but his walls are completely bare. I figured with Christmas around the corner, I’d buy or make him something that’s condo wall worthy.

Inspiration:

If you’ve ever been to Hanco’s on Montague, you might have noticed some of their art. I’m not sure what technique was used but it looks like b&w printing on wood. I tried googling to see if anyone sold those pieces or if there was a particular artist that made this technique popular. I even went on Etsy to see if anyone sold this kind of work to no avail.

Well, if I can’t buy it, I’ll make! The hard part was trying to figure out what technique was possibly used. With a little bit of patience, I found a video tutorial as well as a wonderful picture tutorial by Matsutake.

Instructions and Ingredients:

See Matsutake’s blog for details on ingredients and instructions!

Interesting Points:

• Printing doesn’t necessarily have to be on card stock. Interestingly enough, regular printer paper works just fine! The key is that you use paper that can be fed through your inkjet printer without jamming. As a matter of fact, any paper, including paper that has already been printed on, can be used. The ReduceReuseRecycle in me went as far as using junk mail. If you lather the elmer’s glue evenly, you’ll have no issue at all.
• The best way to remove the paper from the wood after the Mod Podge has dried overnight is in the shower or outside using a hose. The idea is to adjust the shower head or hose to shoot a strong enough jet of water right between the paper and the wood to slowly roll the paper off the wood. If you do it just right, in 5 minutes, your shower head or hose will yield a perfect image on the wood, and one sheet of paper. Bye bye days of crumples of paper!
• I LOVE MOD PODGE! I purchased Mod Podge specifically for this project and used it for the first time. I can’t believe I didn’t try it sooner. As a matter of fact, instead of trying to rub the elmer’s glue off, I’m just going to let the whole thing dry and seal it with Mod Podge once more.

Images:

Obviously this isn’t the finished project but hope I’ve inspired you to give this technique a try!

Heat Transfer: How to Transfer Printed Pattern Text to a T-Shirt

Idea:

What happens when D & I are invited to the birthday dinner for one of his good friends 4 days before the night of the dinner?  Between Mr. gag-gift perfectionist and Ms. Crafter, we come up with this harebrained idea to make a ‘Duck Face Kit’ (inside joke.  Just think Kit for a guy that belongs in the music video ‘I’m sexy and I know it’).  One of the many things we decided on was to include something in tribute of his friend’s famous one-liner and some incorporation of being a tight-t-shirt-wearer.

Inspiration:

The tight t-shirt thought naturally spawned the idea of making a custom t-shirt.  I originally intended to use Silhouette’s Stencil Vinyl and fabric paint and put this Silhouette tutorial to practice but with just 4 days and since I had yet to order stencil vinyl and fabric paint from Silhouette, I settled on using printable heat transfer paper.

After picking the font, we tried a few solid colors but a camouflage background ended up being the winner – albiet possibly a tougher solution.

Interesting Points & Images:

1. One thing both D & I highly dislike about heat transfers is how the unprinted parts of the transfer paper cheapens the look of the t-shirt.  You’ll see in the instructions later how we solved this problem by printing the pattern on the entire sheet of transfer paper and cut out the parts that we didn’t want on the shirt using the Silhouette.
2. When the instructions on the heat transfer paper tell you to wait for the transfer to cool before peeling the backing, they mean wait for the transfer to cool before peeling the backing… unless you want a distressed / faded look.  You’ll see in this image, I didn’t wait on the ‘S’ but grew to be a little more patient with the ‘O’.
3. It’s A-OK to put the iron over the backing of the transfer paper but once you take the backing off, do not go back over the printed part no matter how much you think it’s going to help adhere the loose parts unless you want ink burned onto your iron and subsequently staining everything else you iron afterwards. (Hence some of the dirt and smudge marks on the shirt near the first three letters.)

Instructions & Images:

1. Print the pattern of the font you wish to transfer to the shirt onto the transfer paper.

2. Using your Silhouette, cut your text.  Remember to reverse the text.

3. Now, to make sure you get the text straight and centered on the shirt, use a t-square and the negative of the cut heat transfer paper, and line it up to the place on the t-shirt to where you’d like your text ‘printed’. Be careful not to let the underside of that transfer paper touch the t-shirt especially if the shirt is still warm from previous irons.

4. Take one letter, and using the negative of the heat transfer paper, slowly lay it down on the t-shirt through the negative.  You’ll see in this picture I was already 3 letters through.  You can definitely do all the letters at the same time.  I went one letter at a time because it was too risky to have that many transfer pieces on the t-shirt with a strong possibility that any of them would shift as you started ironing.

5. Slowly move the negative and the t-square away.

6. Iron heat transfer as instructed by the manufacturer of the heat transfer paper.

6. Repeat steps 3-6 for the remaining letters using the already transferred letters as a triple – check for placement.

There you have it (or at least  just part of it in the image).  A son of a….

Ingredients:

Avery T-Shirt Transfer Paper
Silhouette SD
Camouflage Pattern

Decal: A Vinyl Kirby on my MacBook Air

Idea & Inspiration:

Ms. Wynne & Ms. Krafty Pearl introduced me to the wonderful world of Pinterest and one of their findings was an awesome Nerdy Snow White MacBook decal. Well, dammit, it made me want to dress my MacBook Air with a decal too!

Interesting Points:

1. If I can use the positives and the negatives of anything my Silhouette SD cuts, I’m a happy girl. So when I couldn’t convince myself to cut Kirby only for the sake of just an outline of him, my sister and I put our heads together and came up with the idea of using the remaining negative for her snowboard. It worked out great in terms of maximizing on use but we obviously couldn’t use Silhouette’s suggested technique of using transfer paper until at least one part (either negative or positive) was weeded out. So, I weeded out the outline and apply it to my MBA by hand. This allowed us to apply the remaining negative using the transfer paper as suggested.
2. The vinyl is not that sticky at all. It’s good if you’re using the vinyl for temporary wall decor but it’s not so good when it’s being applied to a snowboard surface which is really going to get it’s fair share of a beating. Well, i’ll have to find a way to reinforce it, I guess.

Ingredients:

Silhouette Adhesive Vinyl – White
Silhouette SD

Images: