Big Sister

As I mentioned earlier this week, my husband has a new little cousin. And that new cousin has a four and a half year-old big sister. When we went to visit the baby, we just had to bring a gift for her big sister too. :)

So I decided to make her a shirt with Dress-up Lilly from Pink Cat Studios. Back in high school, I used to paint shirts for my little cousins all the time. I would trace their favorite cartoon character out of a coloring book onto tracing paper with an iron-on pencil and then iron the image onto a shirt. Then I would use Tulip soft paints to color it in. During my last trip to Michaels, I was surprised to see that Tulip still sells these paints. So, I purchased a few colors and took a trip down my crafting memory lane.

The first step to stamping on fabric is to pre-wash the shirt without any fabric softener. Also, don't use a dryer sheet or else the ink and paint won't set fully. Then make sure to stick a piece of cardboard inside the shirt so your paint/ink doesn't bleed through to the back.

After the prep work was done, I stamped Lily using Palette Noir black ink directly onto the shirt. The "big sister" was stamped with VersaMagic craft ink. On an old t-shirt I tried using the Tulip paint directly on the acrylic stamps, but it did not coat very well and ended up stamping poorly.

After letting the ink dry for an hour, I colored Lily in using the Tulip Soft paint. I ended up mixing white with the peach color to lighten it for her skin. Then to add some sparkle, I colored her dress in with the Amethyst pearl paint. It has a lot of sparkle in person, although it is hard to see in the pictures. You can see all the colors of fabric paint on Tulip's website.

When that was dry, I went over Lily's outline with a black fabric marker to give her some more definition.

This was a fun project and I definitely see some more painted T-shirts in my future!

Stamps: Dress Up Lily from Pink Cat Studios, Large & Small polka dot alphabet from A Muse
Ink: Palette Noir Black, Tulip soft fabric paints