Product Review: Tulip Fabric Spray Paint

Fabric is a great versatile canvas to make art and express your creativity.  My mom, the ever supportive parent, picked up Tulip Fabric Spray Paint in Hot Pick for me to try out on some book cloth I was making.  Well can I tell you how much fun I had?! I took a plain bright yellow piece of fabric I had, marked off a grid pattern with some blue painters tape and went at it.  The package tells you how to get a mist effect or a splatter effect.  I tried both and mainly got the splatter effect even when I tried the "mist" effect.  The splatter effect gave it more character I think.  In the image below you will see how the paint comes out. 

You can see it has some heavier more saturated spots but the overall look is somewhat misty.  At CraftsUnleashed Meet it Monday you can see how they use different techniques working with this paint. It works well with stencils as long as you have a good bond or seal with you stencil.  Check out Tulips website ILoveToCreate.com for colors and spray packages. So Get Your Craft On and try out Tulip Fabric Spray Paint.  For people looking for a new tool and technique to add to their textile arsenal.  

Keep Craftin!

Bias Bonanza!! The Experiment Continues....

OK so my bias tape experiments were getting pretty interesting. It’s much easier to make the tape that to use it. I looked online and tried all these methods people we suggesting. Here it goes……


1. Iron your bias tape after pinning it. Alright you’re supposed to stitch in the fold but after I ironed it my fold was gone.

2. Iron it into a curved shape before attaching. The more I curved it started to overlap on itself.

3. Ironing also melted the plastic tops on my straight pins.

4. I found 1 video on sewing “Bias on a Curve” and it just whizzed on through the tutorial with no close-ups of the machine. What’s up with that?

5. Attach your bias tape on the back first. All I can say is no cause then when I folded it over the back looked better than the front.

6. Buy a bias tape maker. I did but my bias came out all wrinkly.

7. Scrunch the tape so there’s extra in the back when you fold it over. Huh? All it did was give me folds in my bias tape that ended up getting stitched down and showed when I folded it over.

8. Lots of pins. OK now that helped.

After many attempts and lots of strange looking experiments I decided I needed to start from the beginning. I got a new yard of fabric out of my closet and made sure I cut 45 degrees of the salvage. I used an iron and my see-through ruler, lined up my ruler along the bottom of my tape and ironed it in place folding over where I wanted my bias fold to be. I took it to my project and pinned my tape in place. When I didn’t have to pull, scrunch or fold….it just laid down so nice and flat…..I jumped for joy. I didn’t want the back to get folded and wrinkle so I pinned on the front, turned it over and pinned on the back so the bottom straight part of the pin helped hold the loose fabric down. I did not sew inside the fold of the tape. Instead I watched to make sure I stayed at 5/8th of on inch that’s on my sewing machine. I it for a straight stitch and my smallest stitch length and it WORKED! Oh all this fussing and it worked. I brought it into work so show a friend and brought it to my mom to show her. Now it’s time to try it on my full size project. And I know can make my own working bias tape. What a relief.

 
Keep on Craftin :D

The New Changes to LeslieGallery

Hooray! i just got done gluing the paper backing on the first set of Shibori book cloth. It feels great to get back in to fabric dying and book arts. Crazy how you take a couple of electives in college and they end up becoming something you want to do all the time.

The biggest thing I keep thinking about is how to let people know my book cloth is out there. There are so many solid colors. I am excited to offer patterns and alternatives to solid colors.

I was listening to the Etsy Success Symposium today. Today I started a daily list of things to-do to better my shop thanks to the helpful people of the symposium. The tasks for today were making fabric in to book cloth and post on my blog. I even squeezed school work in as well.

Keep checking in cause I'm obviously excited to bring you all the new adventures to LeslieGallery :)

Happy Crafting

New Product Line

Recently I have been disappointed in the selection of Book Cloth and Fabric at the arts and craft stores. One of the electives I took during my undergrad was a Surface Textiles class where you learned to dye and print of fabric using all sorts of techiniques. DING! Lightblub moment! Why not make my own fabric. So I have been busy collecting all the materials; dyes, squeeze bottles, soda ash...etc. I am thrilled to start. I have recently decided to make my own book cloth from printed fabric and sell it on Etsy. I think these business ventures are going to be great.

I'm going to start slow, a couple solid colors before I start mixing an experiementing....Oooooo. My creative juices get going just thinking about it. I am excited to share my creations as soon as possible.

Crafty Wednesday!

Hello :)

Today's Crafty Wednesday comes from Etsy.com How-To Tuesday. Simple instructions for a wonderful Fabric Flower. It can be created as a pin, an embellishment for a garment or a cute hair pin. So grab your favorite fabric and let's get crafty :)

Follow the Link:
http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/how-tuesday-fabric-flower-pin-8462/