Lawn Fawn has teamed up with Faber Castell's Design Memory Craft line this week to share ways to use their stamps in conjunction with artsy mediums such as Pitt Pens and Gelatos, and I decided that since I was already using products outside of my comfort zone (and I mean way outside), I might as well go completely out of the box with my project!
I almost started this project with a trip to the fabric store to find some unbleached muslin or other rustic-y (is that a word?) type fabric, but then while I was organizing my scrap room (no doubt in order to avoid some other type of housework I was supposed to be doing) I came across this pair of fabric bags that had just been hanging out ever since they arrived as part of product packaging from an old Studio Calico kit. Since I hadn't found a use for them in the months that they'd been sitting idly in a basket, I decided to cut them up and just use the fabric instead!
This is where I'm cutting out the parts with lots of frustration experienced while trying to stamp with the Gelatos. I want to note that this is absolutely not the fault of the Gelato or the stamps, but rather entirely my problem since I'm so very, very bad at using products like this! Finally I gave up on trying to use Gelato to color my stamps and instead decided to see if I could use Versamark and heat emboss on the fabric to create a resist look instead. That worked like a charm as soon as I figured out that white embossing powder was a better choice than clear, so I loaded up my biggest stamping block with an arrangement of snowflake stamps from Lawn Fawn's Frosties collection and got stamping!
At first I wasn't sure if VersaMark ink would work on fabric (I thought it might absorb completely into the cloth and not actually hold any of the embossing powder), but it actually performed quite nicely, and it wasn't long before I had my own custom resist pattern stamped out.
To add color to the fabric, I started by swiping the Gelato crayon across the fabric in several areas. It'll look totally messy at first, but not to worry because it'll all get smoothed out in the next step.
Gelatos react and blend with water, so I spritzed the fabric with a generous amount...
...and then used a foam brush to spread the Gelato color out.
Did I mention how pleased I was that Faber Castell sent me their metallic pack to work with? I'm loving silver and especially gold accents this Christmas season, so these were absolutely perfect. You can't tell from the photo, but there are really subtle metallic sparkly accents embedded in the color- much more subtle than glitter, and way less messy!
After the fabric dried I traced a several stars on it (I just used a cut-out star shape from my Silhouette as a pattern), and then stitched them together, seam side out. To finish off the rustic look, I frayed the exposed edges of the fabric just a bit.
Gelatos? Fabric? Resist? Sewing actual fabric and not just paper? I don't know what got into me with this project, but I'm so happy to have four new little ornaments to hang on my tree now!
Supplies (click on images for product links):
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