Handmade Holidays Blog Hop 2015

 This year marks the 5th annual Handmade Holiday Blog Hop and I'm so excited to be one of its contributors! I'm really excited about the gift I made but before I jump right into the how-to I want to make sure you know there are links, and a giveaway, for you to check out at the bottom of the post. 

One of my daughter's favorite things to do is draw and frankly, she's pretty good at it. At least I think so and it's hard to argue the merit of a child's artwork with a parent. 

You know who else fauns over your little one's handy work? Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even family friends. Thankfully, it's really easy to turn all their creations into creative, one-of-a-kind gifts! 

We actually used three different techniques but they all had the same premise and that is to spotlight my budding artist's work. First we created a floral watercolor piece; secondly, we painted on an iron-on image transfer; and thirdly, we combined the water color with the image transfer.  All you need to recreate any of these projects is:

So Soft Fabric Paint - iron on transfer paper - paintbrushes - water - cardboard - 

fabric painting surface - binder clips 

Big thanks to DecoArt who provided the So Soft Fabric Paint for this project! 

They are acrylics that are specifically made for fabric, so they don't crack and the fabric remains soft. When you're using the paint (especially if you're going to water color) you'll need to back your material with a piece of cardboard to prevent bleed through. 

Here's a hack for you - Use binder clips to hold your fabric in place while you're painting! 

Like I mentioned before our first project was a floral water color, using only the paint. It was done free hand which can be intimidating but it's not as hard as you'd think.

To start off I spritzed our shirt with water AND added a bit to the paint. Then we started painting. 

We knew we wanted to do flowers but instead of drawing them straight out we created color blobs-for lack of a better word. 

Using the brush, we dragged the paint out and helped it to spread throughout the fabric until it all kind of blended together.  Sometimes we'd give it an extra spritz of water.

Once it was dry, we painted on our flowers in black. 

  

For our second shirt we used the iron on transfer paper to transfer a drawing to the shirt. Did anyone else feel like that sentence was almost a palindrome?  From there we simply used the paint to color in the design. Doesn't she look like a Modigliani?  

 

The last project is a gift for myself! Es had drawn a picture of me but hadn't given me any hair. I love that picture so much and thought it would be fun to give myself a rainbow afro (if you saw my hair on a bad day you'd understand) and put it on a shirt! 

So before I ironed on the transfer paper drawing I repeated the same process we used for the first shirt to create a wild array of colors! Watching the colors blend together is so much fun and it's hard to STOP adding more and more. 

To help keep perspective of where the drawing would go I'd just hold it up to the shirt/painting from time to time, as you can see in the picture above.

I know these might not be everyone's cup of tea but I love them. 

If you're thinking they look like tie-dye you'd be correct but they were WAY less messy to make and with the paint you can use so many more colors.

I CAN NOT wait to wear my shirt, be sure to follow me on Instagram 

and I'll share a rare selfie when I do! 

Big shout out to all of this year's Handmade Holidays Blog Hop sponsors. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway