June 23, 2016

Little Letters Stenciled T-shirt

Amy Jasper not a card, tutorial fabric, framelits, letters, tutorial 2 Comments

This is the year that I turned 42 and I really wanted a shirt with a quote from “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“. When I couldn’t find one, I decided I would make my own.

I wanted to share with you how I did it, using Freezer Paper, Tulip Fabric Paint, Stampin’ Up thinlits and dies and the Big Shot die cutting machine. For the featured project, I used Little Letters thinlits (recently retired) and the long retired Typeset Alphabet Bigz Die.

First thing to do is to select a t-shirt. This one is a cheap thin shirt that I purchased on sale at Superstore. It is a cotton blend and is nice and smooth to take the paint easily.

I put a large piece of cardboard inside the t-shirt to prevent paint from leaking through the shirt onto the back. What a mess that would be! I did some eyeball measurements in addition to a few actual measurements to do my best to make sure my letters would be straight and centered. Then I began cutting out the letters using my Big Shot and the freezer paper.

Washi tape is a gentle way to secure the freezer paper in place as I positioned them on my shirt. Don’t forget to check and double check your spelling!!

Then I ironed the freezer paper with a medium heat, careful to avoid the washi tape, removing it as the freezer paper began to adhere to the fabric.

(I had to very carefully take the cardboard out of the shirt for this step, so I could slide it onto the ironing board. – when I do this again, I will probably put the shirt on the ironing board during the placement of the letters, then add the protective cardboard just for the painting process.)

You’ll notice that some of the letters are missing the centers. You could leave it that way or add them in later (don’t forget to save them when you die cut the letters to begin with!)

It can be a challenge to get those little bits straight in these small letters. I took my time.

When everything is in place and secured with the iron, you can use the fabric paint and a foam brush to apply paint to your stenciled letters. I used a stippling motion with my brush positioned horizontally, then vertically, on the letters to ensure full coverage.

I had to be careful when painting my large letters as there were small spaces in between each letter. This is what it looked like after two coats of fabric paint. (I didn’t even wait between coats)

As soon as your fabric paint is pretty well absorbed (make sure there aren’t any pools of paint- you shouldn’t be using that much!), you can start slowly peeling off the freezer paper.

I used my paper-piercing tool to help me lift the smaller pieces of freezer paper for removal. My paint wasn’t completely dry and I didn’t want to get any on my fingers or cause the paint to smudge.

Finally, I allowed the shirt to dry overnight. The last step was to turn the shirt inside out and heat-set the paint in the dryer.

The result is a cute, custom-made t-shirt! I can’t wait to make more!

I hope you’ll give it a try! Stampin’ Up! has a new set of Large Letter Framelits that would be perfect for this project!

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October 24, 2015

Woodland Embossing Folder

Amy Jasper Christmas, Techniques card, Christmas, embossing, Stampin' Up, technique, tutorial, woodland folder 122 Comments

The Woodland embossing folder by Stampin’ Up! is so versatile for Christmas, Halloween, fall, winter, summer – it can literally be used for anything!

My new favourite is to use it to create a forest scene. I’ve seen this done by a few other demonstrators, but I ran into a few problems along the way and thought I could share my trouble-shooting with you.

First, here’s the card I made and have since fallen in love with:

To created this card, I used a direct ink pad to embossing folder technique. This has been done before, but this time I used Soft Sky where the lower half of the sky was going to be, then used Pool Party for the upper half of the sky.

My first few attempts gave me blobs and pools of colour that didn’t jive with my expectations. This is likely because my ink pads are nice and juicy. Normally, you want a juicy ink pad for great colour distribution, but it can backfire a bit on you with solid flat sections on a stamp or when you want to use the ink pad for sponging techniques.

You could work with some of these effects for a different overall look, but I was looking for something softer and smoother.

Soft Sky ink – no brayer

Soft Sky ink – spritzed with water – no brayer

Soft Sky ink – with brayer

When I get blotches of ink on a stamp (like when I used my Definitely Dahlia background stamp), I will often roll my brayer over the stamp surface after inking it to thin and smooth the ink. I decided to try it with the ink on my folder.

Once I sorted out my sky and decided on the Pool Party/Soft Sky ink combo, I could proceed with directly stamping my Winter Wonderland trees with Mossy Meadow ink on the Woodland embossing folder. I stamped them in varying heights and was careful to re-ink my stamp each time to ensure every tree was solid.

With my images and inking completed, I was ready to press my Whisper White cardstock. If you lay the paper on the un-inked side of your embossing folder, you will avoid the risk of smudging the ink on the cardstock. I chose to lay my paper dead center on the un-inked side of the folder so that the messy bottom area of my stamped trees wouldn’t show on my cardstock, but I would have a nice tree line showing in the middle-upper area of my cardstock piece.

Fold it all together carefully, holding it so it does. not. move, run it through the Big Shot.

Vacant areas actually work on this project, because it is an art piece. You can interpret those vacant areas as wisps of clouds or even snow.

Finishing the card was simple. I didn’t want to cover up the pretty woodland image, but wanted to highlight it as much as I could. I started with a Crumb Cake mat behind the embossed cardstock and layered that on my Thick Whisper White card base with Stampin’ Dimensionals. The sentiment from the Hostess stamp set, Six Sayings, was stamped in Early Espresso ink on a Whisper White banner. Linen Thread tied in a bow to finish it with a bit of natural texture.

The final touch is adding the 3 sequins (pronounced “seek-wins”, not “sequence”, lol!). I thought of them as Christmas ornaments hanging from the trees, but they could also be thought of as sparkly snow softly falling from the sky.

You can order any of these products by clicking the ‘shop now’ button on my website or by contacting me through my email.

Now, don’t stop there. If you liked this tutorial, go and give it a try for yourself. Don’t have that embossing folder? Play around with what you have and see what you come up with!

Now get stamping!