Thursday, December 31, 2009

craft night: freezer paper prints

Recently I have been hosting a (nearly) weekly craft night. It is one of the most rewarding things I do. Not only am I spending time with some of my dearest friends, but I'm also getting to be productive with all that creative energy.

Last night we made prints on canvas out of freezer paper. It's kind of similar to screen printing, but much more labor intensive if you want to do more than one.

Here's how the magic happens:

Draw your design with pencil on the non-shiny side of the paper. Then cut it out with an Xacto blade. You can do floating shapes inside of a cut-out but know that you'll have to manually position it on your fabric, and it is difficult to keep it in place.
Next, iron it shiny-side down onto your fabric until it's mostly stuck. Use a very hot iron.
Use a sponge brush or paint brush to dab your paint directly onto the fabric. Be sure not to spread the paint using strokes. Paint could be pushed under the stencil this way. It's not pretty, trust me.
Gently peel your freezer paper stencil from the fabric. You really should wait for it to dry before removing. That being said, we were all super impatient, and pulled it off immediately after painting it. You just need to be careful that your wet stencil doesn't fall onto your print.
...and ta-da! This is my finished tote bag.
Alissa's beautiful honeycomb print.
Maria's canvas panel to later be stitched to her tote bag.

2 comments:

Laurie Stark said...

I love this! They turned out beautiful. Are drawing skills included with the freezer paper though? Because I'm pretty sure mine would not turn out this pretty. :)

p.s. Thanks for the tip about dabbing the paint! That's what I did wrong when I tried screenprinting!

Unknown said...

thank, Laurie!

i think drawing skills help. But if worse comes to worse you could use a stencil, or beg one of your artistic buddies to help you :)

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