A Photo, A Piece Of Tie Dyed Fabric And Some DecoArt So Soft Fabric Paint. . . . . . . . .

I've been having a play with some of the new DecoArt So Soft Fabric Paint. I've only played with one colour but I wanted to see how the finished result would feel on fabric. In my experience, lots of fabric paints leave the surface feeling stiff or 'plastic-like', they often bleed and forget using it through a stencil - disaster!

The first thing I did was to choose an image of my daughter and have a little play around with it on a simple image editing programme called Photoscape.

So from this. . . . . . . 

. . . . . . . to this. Now I had a black and white image I could transfer onto fabric and it turned into. . . . . . 

. . . . . this explosion of colour!

I used an old piece of tie dyed fabric from my teaching days; some Americana Transfer Paper (which is just like carbon paper and is used on top of the fabric face down, with the altered image on the top and a pencil/pen is used to trace round your chosen image) and finally some black DecoArt So Soft Fabric Paint. 

The fabric was taped flat on the craft sheet so it wouldn't drag or move when painted. You can see from this image that you then simply colour in the areas with your chosen shade but you must keep referring to your picture just in case you colour the wrong section!
Several different sizes of brush will be needed according to the line and space that you are adding using the paint.

The instructions say to leave the paint to dry for 48 hours before washing on a gentle cycle. I washed mine by hand and although the black didn't run despite me using a good thick layer (as suggested on the bottle), I did get lots of colour run from the tie dye. On the left you can see a worn patch with the tie dye pattern just visible. This happened because I was too rough with my fabric when washing. However, I liked the distress look much more than the pristine one, so gave a few other areas of the work a good rub.

I really like the tie dye pattern and colours showing through.

I tried to have a go at splattering some paint onto the exposed areas of tie dye. I didn't go overboard with it and I like just the small touch of splatter!

For the sides of the work which would be exposed on the canvas this piece would be mounted on, I chose to use some So Soft through a stencil (very easy - no bleeding and it washed off the stencil easily). I used an Andy Skinner stencil for the two sides and another for the top edge but I can't remember who it came from - sorry!
Once dry, the fabric was ironed then stretched over a canvas with a frame and stapled into place.

Top edge stencilling to create interest on the sides of the frame.

So, how easy was that?!! So much fun and now I want to have a go at stamping with DecoArt So Soft - it's supposed to work like a dream so I can't wait!

Hope you like it! For those who are nosy, we're still moving but our date isn't until approx the 21st so still time to pack more boxes!

Please also keep your fingers crossed for my cat Frankie (you can see his photo on the left margin of my blog). He was diagnosed with pancreatitis yesterday and is very poorly now. Fingers crossed they can get the meds and diet right to manage it.