Fabric.

I bought fabric today! yay ! Gosh its been a while...when at uni I used to frequent the stores ever so often and look through all the beautiful fabrics before finally shelling out my hard earned pennies for gorgeous fabrics to print onto! Tough life but sooo worth it!
Anywhoo, this fabric is for the SWAP! I'll be sending these out (after handprinting something amazing!) to 4 other crafty folk from the states / the U.K / Australia !
I don't usually go with these kind of colours but in keeping with the whole indie-crafty styling of this project I went for it and bought some home spun cotton in a cool aqua , creamy white , chalky grey and a pink that sooo reminds me of strawberry milkshake! Yumm!
Printed design photos this weekend ~
Speakin of.. TGIF!!!!!!!!!!!! Have a wonderful end to the week everyone!

Mid week DIY lovelyness!

Spotted this gorgeous DIY craft idea through printerest by the better homes and garden peeps!I love how simple it is to do and has potential to be customised! Amazing!

Taking a moment to...

...enjoy the lovely blooms in my mum;s precious garden :) Even though I have NO clue what these flowers are called, I love the colour that they bring to the backyard and they're any photographers delight!

 And ofcourse taking a moment (or two) to indulge in some chocolate...like this belgian chocolate waffle platter with fresh fruit and ice cream! Yummy!

Inky-Printy-Saturday

Hello everyone!

(and on a side note : Hello! spring sunshine :) Hope you all enjoyed melbourne's 30 degree day today and look forward to more tomorrow!

My day was spent tackling this handprinting challenge!I've always stayed away from lino cuts,mainly coz they can be quite time consuming and painstaking, but I decided it was finally time to bite the dust and give it a go!

I love handprinting but Im so used to the screen printing process that I found it quite a challenge and slightly frustrating doing hand stamping...BUT that said, I did have a great time getting my hands messy and playing around with cutting/painting/printing and all the other good things that come with it!

Here are a few shots from my day...

(My camera broke over the long weekend - was accidentaly dropped...so please excuse my horrible phone camera photography!)




 This is the folksy design I spoke about in my previous post. It was quite intricate n tricky but I managed to cut it out ok.However the printing wasn't as successfull..I think it might have to do with the consistence of the paint and also the type of fabric I was printing on...I plan to do some more tests...

I ended up using acrylic ink to print with - mixed with a textile medium to adhere it onto the fabic...it worked quite well, but Im still in the process of getting the consistency right...
I did some quick tests on calico and some natural cotton and I think the cotton worked better. I found the calico a bit to textured ...
The polka spot design was done using a lino stamp and the rounded squares using a stamp cut out of some foam...
So..what do you think ? So far so good ?

In the spirit of handprinting # 2

Got my act together last night and did some lino cutting in preparation for THE SWAP!
I did a very simple organic "polka" dot shape (surprise!surprise!) to begin with...I'm hoping I can layer different colours in the one print using this motif...lets see...
However, I then got more ambitious and designed a folk inspired large scale motif which I will attempt to cut out tonight...Pics will be up tomorrow :)
In the meatime, let me know what you think ... Any ideas? Tips? I've used these methods to print onto paper but never directly onto fabric, so it should be a intersting to see how that progresses.

First though, I need to get some fabric paints...Any suggestions where to look?

TIP : It helps to microwave your lino sheet before cutting into it, this tends to soften it up a bit and makes the carving process a whole lot easier!

Cheers!