Getting messy with CraftyRoo

Hi everyone, 

Kym here, I am so excited to have been asked along to Colourcraft blog it is such an honour. So, I am relatively new to Brushos but I just love their inky goodness and I have been wondering how they work with fabrics????

Well I got messy! Very messy and had a play, sorry I mean I experimented! And this is what I came up with.....

Now lets get the boring bits out the way first, if you want to be able to wash your fabrics then you need to treat them with fabric medium. But if like me you you have no intention of popping your creation through the washer then go right ahead.

First up I found some lovely cream fabric and an old embroidery hoop. My hoop measured just under 8 inches so I cut my fabric 12 inch square. And then I cut a number of smaller pieces that I would colour for my flowers.

    
I covered my work surfaces then I popped some Lemon, Gamboge and Crimson into a paint pallet and added water to each to make a very watery paint. Starting in one corner and working diagonally I started with the Lemon, then moved onto Gamboge and finally Crimson.

As I moved onto the next colour I sprinkled more Brushos over the fabric until all of my fabric was coloured.

I sprtized the sprinkled Brushos until I was happy with the results. I finally added Leaf Green over the Lemon to look like foliage and Purple over the Crimson to look like an intense Sunset. My fabric was really wet, so I popped it outside to dry on top of the plastic mat.

Next I started work on the green for the foliage. For this I took 2 pieces of fabric and wrapped them tightly (like you would for tie dyeing). Mixed up a a small bowl of Leaf Green Brusho and water. Attached a paper clip to each of the fabric bundles and submerged them into the bowl - the paperclip stopped them from bobbing up to the top. I left this the soak for about 45 mins.

I then removed it from the water, unwrapped them and laid them down on kitchen roll. The colour wasn't quite as bright as I had hoped so I sprinkled them with Leaf Green Brusho and crumpled them up in kitchen roll to dry them a little, then I left them to dry.

The next technique I decided to try was to soak my fabric until it was dripping wet then pop it on top of a protected surface and sprinkle Brushos over the top and spritz until I was happy with the piece of fabric. Again I left this to dry a little before moving as it was really wet.

When my backing fabric was dry enough to handle I removed it form the plastic mat and hung it to dry. I went back to tidy up and found this.....

I couldn't waste that so I quickly pulled 2 prints from it to use another day!

(I did this to with the blue and orange pieces too!)

When all of my pieces of fabric were dry I gave them a quick iron.

Starting with the background I pulled out my permanent inks and stamps. I used our Junes Monthly Make set, our Chicken wire and Harlequin texture stamp. First up I randomly stamped the Distress panel stamp down both sides of the fabric remembering to rotate my stamp and us 2nd and 3rd generation images.

I positioned the hoop over the background and lightly marked the outside edge. I then stamped the Harlequin texture in the top right hand corner and the Chicken wire in the bottom left. Along the bottom edge I stamped our Funky Flowers Amazing image and Funky Flower Happy in the top left.

Onto the pieces of fabric I stamped the flower heads again and cut these out and started to sew them into place. Before I had sewn them all on I stamped some small Butterflies from Junes Monthly Make set and solid butterfly and left these to dry.

I finished sewing the flowers into place, once I was happy with the background I ironed it on the reverse and stretched in the hoop.

I then stamped some more flowers and leaves using our Beautiful and Grace stamp sets.

Theses were then cut out and positioned onto the hoop, when I was happy with the lay out I started attaching the flowers and leaves into place. And embellished it using beads.

For the butterfly I folded a piece of purple netting and secured it to my glass mat, then stamped the detailed butterfly stamp onto it. I then stitched down the centre of the butterfly to join all the pieces together. The butterfly was then removed from the board and cut around leaving a small border it was then stitched to the hoop.

Once everything was attached the the hoop I re-stretched the fabric and tightened it up again and trimmed around the edge. With the pieces I trimmed off I cut these into strips, frayed the edges and tied them around the fastening on the hoop.

Well, a big thank you for join me for my project I really hope you enjoyed as much as I did!