Class curtains

When I sarted working with 1st grade children at my current school, I thought it'd be a great way to welcome them to make their own curtains for the class; this would make the class a little more "theirs".

And they were sooooooo easy to make!!! All you need is:

- A pair of curtains (or as many as you need). I got "mine" really cheap at Ikea

- Fabric paint.

- Children's hands.

and that's it!!

Merry Christmas!!

A little late, but... well here in Spain Christmas holidays last until January the 7th which means we're almost in the middle of these days. Still a lot of things to do, parties to prepare and presents to buy (we celebrate the Three Wise Men better than Santa)... uff!!

Anyway, have fun wherever you are and I really hope you have the best Christmas ever!!

Love and peace

.

Presents (I)

I made these two bibs as a present for a couple of friends that are expecting their first baby. They live in another city, so we decided to visit them and bring them our presents. They don't want to know if the baby is a boy or a girl, so I chose two unisex colours. About the pattern I took it from the wonderful site homemade by jill.

I know the first bib is a bit twisted, but it was the first try, in fact, I wanted to redo it but time's been running out lately.... And the photo is a bit dark because is my new camera and I didn't know how to use it yet... ^_^U

Back to school- Stencil tote bag

My husband is going to start studying for a contest to become a Secondary teacher, so we decided to better get ready for long days at the public library and classes at the academy.
Yesterday we went to Ikea and bought a 15€ tote bag. As he wanted it to be something "personal" -and he really loves any kind of ape-, I decided to stencil a monkey and some flowers on it. You can see how it's made by following the instruction I gave on the post before this one. The patterns are too from Stencil 101 by Ed Roth.

It was quite difficult to keep it in place as you can see, there was some "low lines" and the paint went to them all the time even though I tried to keep the brush as dry as possible.... Now I'm trying to clean out the excess with cotton swabs.

Stencil T-Shirt (mixing colours)

I made up this T-shirt from a very cheap one I bought at H&M. The quality of the fabric wasn't really good, but as it was a try I didn't care....

This technique is really easy but let's go step by step. You'll only need:
- A T-shirt.
- Fabric paint.
- Stencil patterns.
- Stencil brushes.
-Iron.

First, you stretch you T-shirt with a cardboard inside (this way you'll prevent painting through to the back of the T-shirt as well). Don't stretch it too much, just as if it was just ironed.

Second, you'll place your stencil pattern. The stencil patterns I used were from the Stencil 101 (by Ed Roth) book, but it can be handmade as well. So, you place the patern where you want it to be and secure it in place with weights, tape, spray adhesive (but wait until it dries)...

Third, you paint it, But remember that stencil is a quite dry technique, so don't overload the brush (or the foam). If you are going to use spray, be really careful to protect the T-shirt with papers so you don't spray outside of the stencil pattern.. For this T-shirt, I used an ashtray as a palette and mixed some colours (but not too much or you end up just with brown ^_^!). Then I started stenciling deciding which colours I wanted for each part of the picture.
Once it is finished, remove the pattern from the T-shirt.

Fourth, you have to iron the T-shirt if you like the result. If not, you just wash the T-shirt and the stencil disappears, but if you want to keep it, turn the T-shirt inside out and iron the area you painted for one or two minutes and 2-3 iron heat point.

Hope it's clear enough; if not, I'll write more post about stencils, so don't worry.