Fleur de Lis

For some reason I feel like I have posted these before but maybe that is just because they are sitting out where I can see them in my work area and so I think about them a lot. So here we have two shirts that I made using two different techniques to see which I liked the best.

The first one I used a screen printing glue and applied the glue to the shirt and then shook the glitter over the part of the shirt that had the glue. This worked well but I had to race against the clock before the glue dried and even after heat setting there is still glitter that is left behind by this technique. Fine if you are little kid but not for a mom who hats glitter all over their house. On the plus side, I do like how much shimmer and sparkle this method left.

I realized that I had some silver screen printing ink and that I hadn't tried it out yet. This knight I thought would look great in silver on this black tee-shirt. It turned out to have a bit more sparkle than I thought it would. I was thinking that it would be more grey but silver it is! Perfect. Now to think of other fun things to print in silver. All I can think of right now is dollar signs gangster style. ha.

No really it could be great for a sports fan shirt or even a Halloween shirt with a cool sparkly skeleton head.

Hope you all had a great weekend. It was great here but went way too fast. I have a few fun projects that I am working on this week and one of them is baby gift set for a client.

Z is for...

Zebra...and Zoe. I made this shirt for my Goddaughter; she and some other friends are often times my guinea pigs as I try new items and new ways of doing things. This time I wanted to try the foil technique with screen printing. This picture makes it look awesome and it was cool but I need to ask how it held up because I had a hard time getting some areas to stick.

There is always a learning curve with a new medium and I think I need to figure out how to use the glue that comes with this and maybe even find a different kind. It was drying so quickly that I could barely get the foil on in time. I do love the way it looks and I think it would be awesome for small detail and accents on certain items.

I hope to play around with this a bit more. Does anyone have something they would like to see in metallic?

St. Valentine's Day Craft Fail and Ideas

You already saw my post Monday about the "I love __" onesies and today I have more ideas and links for you. If I had no idea what month it was up all I had to do was look at the blogs in my reader, they are going Valentine's Day crazy. Let's call it St. Valentine's Day, that brings it back to a less commercial holiday right? ok maybe not.

Here is a shirt that I made in the fall and it was an epic fail. It does fit into the Valentine's day theme so let's talk about it! I wanted to try out the Yudu fabric glue with the flocking to see if I could create a flocked tee-shirt. I applied the glue like I was told to and then applied the flocking material. It looked great until I pulled the cover off. As you can see not only did a bit of the glue run under the design but the flocking went all over and stuck to the black shirt. Fine flocking dust everywhere.

I tried to wash it to see if that would help make the dust go away on the shirt...well the dust went away on the shirt and it also went away on the image. Now there are blank patches of glue where it should be pink.

So next time I might try using a sheet of flocking, or maybe I wasn't fast enough with putting the flocking on and some of the glue dried? I might just use iron on flocked vinyl and call it quits with the glue and flocking material. Sometimes you win and sometimes you loose. This time I think I lost. Now I hope I have a girl so I can gift this shirt to them...or maybe I will apply a fabric applique over this and give it to my boys to wear.

I wanted to also remind you of some items in my shop that would be great Valentine's day presents. Let me know if you would like to place an order for something, or be sure to check out my Etsy page for more info.

Do you need to show Grandma that your kids love her? Try these onesies. I can make this say I (heart) mom, dad, grandpa, fill in the blank.

How about a shirt, onesie, bloomers, or a bib with a heart on it? I could do something like this and use rhinestones, embroider, or even screen print a name or initial. SO many options and all custom.

We all saw what happened with the flocking but I can cut this love image out of fabric, screen print it, or even use tee-shirt vinyl and apply it to a shirt for you. It have yet to do it but I could cut out the word LOVE in fabric and apply that to a shirt or onesie. Custom options are endless.

Need to make some Valentine's for your kid's class at school? What about some hearts that can be made into a Valentine's day card or sewn or glued together to make bunting. These hearts are cut from new and vintage wallpaper. I have a TON of wallpaper so we can talk about what color/patterns you want these cut from.

These are just some ideas of what I can do to help make this day special for that little special someone in your life.

I hope you liked this St. Valentine's day inspired post, I am going to show you holiday ideas from my shop every holiday this year, so stay tuned for St. Patrick's Day. If you hate these "commercially driven holidays," bare with me, it will only be about 7-14 posts this whole year.

Stay tuned...tomorrow there will be a giveaway!!

Halloween Onesie

A friend of mine is having a baby due on Halloween. Now you have to know her to know how perfect this is, she LOVES Halloween. Loves scary movies. Loves dressing up etc. I thought it was so fitting that she is due Oct 31st that for her baby shower I knew I had to make her a little skeleton onesie.

They are waiting to find out what they are having so this is a perfect unisex outfit and even if baby comes after Halloween it will be cute to wear right after as well. I used white screen printing ink and then tried for the first time the glow in the dark ink. It looks pretty cool. It glows slightly in the dark and makes it look a bit like a zombie...zombies glow right!? Well they sound like the should. I think next time I will wait and put another layer of glow in the dark in on top so that it glows even brighter.

I paired this onesie with this set of baby leggings perfect for either a boy or girl and for fall to wear with this onesie and make diaper changes easier. These grow with baby and I am sure that they can be worn in spring with any white or black onesie...perfect for tummy time or crawling.

I think the gift was a success, she seemed to like it and now I can not wait to find out when this baby is going to arrive and what it is going to be! I have the perfect "welcome home" for the baby that I can not wait to make.
Does anyone need a onesie for Halloween? Put your order in!

New Fabric/New Find Friday #84

Wow these posts keep getting later and later, I don't know how some parents get it all done in a day-and blog! I am trying to keep up the pace.

Several months ago I saw on some craft blogs that the makers of Yudu came out with new products for the Yudu. I was so excited to hear about it and of course had to buy all of the new stuff myself to try out. They added a new screen that you can use a special glue to screen print an image on your item and then use glitter, foil or flocking to embellish your item. HOW COOL.

I have not actually had time to play with these yet but they are on my list of things to do when I am feeling adventurous. Maybe this will come in handy for a Christmas project that I have in mind. Flocking is big right now in wallpaper and fabric so I think this is something great that I can add to items that I make to give them a fresh look.

The foil and glitter I think will be great to layer with the standard ink, to accent and give a bit of bling to a design. The flocking and glitter I can totally see on a card to add some zing and dimension.

Oh so many ideas so little time! Now back to sewing..I have a few things I want to get finished and out in the mail. I hope everyone has a great weekend and that you get to enjoy this beautiful weather. I think I see some walks in my future, need to get them in before it is too cold to walk outside.


Image found here http://www.capadiadesign.com/2010/07/few-more-cha-photos.html

Baby Presents for E and C

I am learning more and more about my embroidery machine each day, what I can do with it, how to make it do what I want it to do, and just simple things like how to thread the needle. Let me tell you automatic needle threaders are great but tricky sometimes!
When I was working on these items that a friend commissioned for two new babies I ran into some more embroidery problems. I put the name Evan on this onesie and it ate a few holes in the onesie and it was puckered between the letters. I hated how it looked and decided to do it over again.

The second time making the onesie I thought I would try using my Yudu machine and screen print the name instead! I think it turned out MUCH better and I even changed the pattern and color of the outfit since I went ahead and gave them that other onesie for free, now they have two with different looks.

I really like how it turned out but I also wanted to fix the problems that I had on the other onesie so I went to learn more about my machine from the store where I purchased it and boy did I learn a lot. I hope that my future embroidery projects go so much smoother than this one did.

She also wanted me to add some initials to burp cloths so that she could apply ribbon and make them more personable for the two different babies. I love how simple the one initial is on the burp cloth, and thank goodness these went well on my machine!

There are more projects like this coming down the pike, be on the look out for a lot of personalized items.

New Fabric/New Find Friday #70

I have new bags! I have been wanting to work on these bags for a long time and with the help of my yudu machine I finally made them. I was going to use yellow on this neutral colored bag but it did not show up as dark as I wanted it to, I printed all of them while the screen was wet. Here is what they look like:

Here it is when I tried it on one of the white bags that I have. It looks even worse on the white than it does on the neutral bags, but for some reason this picture doesn't make it look too bad.

So instead I decided to try blue. I love blue it is one of my favorite colors. I am still experimenting with what color to use all of the time, but maybe I will switch it up and not use the same color all of the time. Any color recommendations?

I made a screen for my yudu about a year ago with my business name on it but I did not format it with my button logo. That just means more time actually printing the bags -one for the title, once for the sub-line, and once for the logo. You can see that the first picture is just my title and no sub-line, that shows the first run. The second picture has the title and sub-line it is the second run. I never made the third run because it was just taking so long to let it dry between runs. So next time I am going to make it on one screen...formatted the way I want it on the bag with the two names and the button logo.

That is going to have to wait until I am ready to make a new screen with other items. I have been thinking about big and little brother and sister shirts and doing months and year on the screen so I can screen print that on onesies and shirts. Anything you would like to see? Maybe a design that I can print on napkins...humm. You will have to wait and see.

One-Year Onesie

A good friend's second baby is having her first birthday this month. I made a little onesie at my friend's request last week and I like the way it turned out.

She choose this fabric which I thought was a great pick and we were going back and forth as to what color to make the letters. We both liked the idea of pink but we were not sure it would show up over the 1. So after I had the 1 on the shirt I decided it had to have brown stitching which means it HAD to have brown letters. :) The only problem with that is that I did not have any brown ink for my YUDU and didn't want to go to the store to buy more. So I made my own! I think it turned out pretty good.

I can't wait to see picture of the big one year old in her onesie on her birthday!

3 Month Cutie

I had a very successful Showcase on Saturday. Thank you to everyone who stopped by and a special thank you to everyone who placed orders. Don't forget to put May 8th on your calendar for my second Saturday Showcase.

I finished this little project just in time for the show and it was sent home today with the lucky lady that will be wearing it soon.

She wanted a three month onesie for her pictures coming up this week. This was a great chance for me to use my screen printing machine. I love the way it turned out.

The pink ink even has a bit of shimmer in it so it give it some dimension rather than just being a flat pink. I hope baby L loves it! Once I get pictures from the mama I will post a little "after" post.

First Birthday Updated

Here she is....the one year old! I talked about this cute shirt I helped make here and I just wanted to show you how cute the shirt was with the tutu! She looked SO cute that evening and seemed to love every minute of it.


I asked the mama to give me the link for the tutu in case you NEED to get one for someone you love. I think it is so cute! http://hannahstutus.com/item_396/Pink-Harvest-Tutu.htm

A First Time for Everything

A good friend's first baby is one today! Her first birthday party was last weekend and I helped put together this cute onesie for the occasion.

Isn't it cute?! Her mom ironed on the 1 that was cut out of some fabric that I had left over from work, doesn't it say party? For her name, Gianna, I pulled out my Yudu for the first time and that was exciting and quite an experience. I have learned a lot about how long it takes and now have more confidence to do more.

I think the name screen printed really makes the shirt. I will edit this post soon with a cute picture from the party with the shirt in action. :)

YUDU

It is here!!!

I have finally went out a few weekends ago and purchased the YUDU that I have been wanting. It was on sale (plus $50 Michaels card) so I went for it!


I have yet to take it out of the box but I am so excited to start using it. Here come tee-shirts, bags, onsies, etc. Now just to have some free time and some ideas of what to put on these tee-shirts, bags etc.


Any ideas?

New Craft tool!

I was just reminiscing the other day about how much fun silk screening was back in my Fibers class in college and about how great it would be to do it again. Then the very next week I see an email from Michael's that they were going to start selling the YUDU a silk screening machine!!!! I was excited! http://www.whatdoyudu.com/

Normally I don't like to use too many tools or things that I have to buy for each of my projects. I like to try to use things that I already have, old stamps, my computer, craft scissors from a few years ago. I also don't like to spend a lot of money, always going for the sale or the reused item, but I just heard about the YUDU and I just can not wait to go buy one!!! It is about 300 dollars which seems like a lot but think of all of the great things I can make. Not only can I print on all of my great fabric crafts projects I have in my head, but on my paper projects, wood, and who knows maybe even more! I am not sure when but I hope to get it before August (there is a gift card incentive attached). So be on the lookout for fun craft projects coming soon!