Paint, Transfer, Stencil, Reuse!

I have been coming across so many great ideas for different ways of doing things. Because there's so much I've decided the best way to get it all blogged is to have a kind of topic each week.

This week I wanted to post all the amazing ideas I've found for creating things with paint or ink. I got started on this track because I wanted to find out ways to make my own t-shirts. I do not sew! So I wanted to buy a plain t-shirt and be able to put whatever I wanted on it, without it looking like a 1st grader did it! In my search I came up with alot of fun and (mostly) easy ways to not only design t-shirts but all kinds of other things!

The first thing I checked into was screenprinting. You can get alot of cute designs with this process and this is the method used to make most professional t-shirts you see. However, after watching a tutorial on youtube I was a little afraid. The tutorial was using a professional screenprinting company to show how to screenprint. I should have looked further but instead ran away from that idea for about a week.

Then while wondering through Hobby Lobby I came across this silk screenprinting kit! It runs about $40.00 and looks really easy. There was also tons and tons of colored ink to use besides what was in the kit. So after finding this I am very interested in getting one and trying it out for myself.

I was really excited to find two different tutorials on two different blogs. One (you see a picture from above) was Whimsy love - http://whimsy-girl.blogspot.com/2009/04/diy-screen-printing.html and the second was ThreadBanger - http://www.threadbanger.com/post/490/diy-screen-printing-how-to . Both of these are great tutorials that you can do at home and would (possibly) be cheaper than buying a kit. While Whimsy love's design is cute and simple you can make multi-colored, multi-designed screen print designs. You just have more than one design, lay out the various stencils the way you want then and then do one at a time allowing them to dry before applying the next one.

Here's just a few ideas for things you can embellish with screenprinting:

Bags

Cards

Curtains

Journals

Onesies (Aww)

Pillows

Skirts!

There are tons more ways this technique can be used! It take a little time but the results are so cute! So definitely something to try (if your feeling adventurous). Fun, fun possibilities!