Using Water Slide Decal Paper

After having read some of Carol's of Polka Dot Closet fame tutorials on water slide decals I knew I had to try it. 

She recommended the Papilio.com web site as a source for quality decal paper.

So I figured if Carol loved the Papilio water slide decals, I would to.  

One of the nice things about Papilio site is all the instructions they have.  I purchased the following additional items as they suggested.  

The decal film spray is used to protect the ink when you submerge your paper in water.

"The Papilio Decal Film is simply a superior product to any clear aerosol spray available on the market for arts and crafts use. It is manufactured especially to form flexible film that will work with water slide decal paper, a film that will "never" yellow and stay flexible for years."

I also purchased the rubber decal squeegee.

 "The rubber decal squeegee in an important tool when applying water slide decals to any substrate. Applying a water decal without using this or similar tool will not give optical results."

Plus I purchased their Mounting Fluid. 

 

"The Clear Decal Mounting Fluid is a water based product designed especially for use with our water slide decal paper. This mounting fluid will improve the application process of the water slide decal especially when working with larger decals."

So following the instructions that came with the paper I was all set to go. 

My first project using the decals was the child's chair pictured below.  

Look closely at the top of the chair for the decal

Because I was starting with just one project I didn't want to waste a whole sheet of the decal paper for one image so with my Photoshop elements I loaded the page up with different images that I knew I'd use some day. 

Like with all things there is ALWAYS a learning curve even with the best written directions.  

My first problem was I did not spray enough of the fixative on the paper and the first image I cut from the paper bled all of it's colors.   So resprayed the remaining images with a bit more of the fixative and waited a full day before I used it,  just to be safe.  In the future what I think will work better is to do a few short sprays on the paper letting the fixative dry in between sprays to ensure that all areas are covered with the fixative. Again I'd like to wait 24 hours to mount the decals.

Second problem I had is I used the squeegee a bit to hard and wiped off part of the image. As you can see from my close up photo one side is missing the flowing flowers.   More lessons learned. 

I love these decals and have a few more projects planned. Below are some of the dishes I did using the decals. These dishes were meant for display only. 

Graphics from the Graphicsfairy

Don't you just love The Graphics Fairy French images. This image really looks great on this plate. 

So this dish was so pretty on it's own but I thought I'd mess with a good thing. Jury is out on whether or not I like it. I actually had three of these dishes and did not let one escape my madness. So it's understood the pink flowers were in the original design of the dish I just add the black image. I know .....what the heck was I thinking?
  
 So if you haven't tried water decals I suggest you do, the images look like they are painted on which adds a bit of pizazz to your objects. Just think twice before trying to enhance an already pretty piece like I did.

I'm joining these parties   

WTF Wednesday at Shabby Loco 
Brag Monday at the Graphicsfairy
Vintage Inspiration at Common Ground 

Dinner Platter Turned Decor Accessory!

There are so many things that I love, like paint, notebooks, fabric and I wrote about those things here. But to tell you the truth I love so many things it would be hard to list them all so as I come up with new items that I declare my passion for just understand I have many loves .

So now that you know all that I can safely say to you that I love dishes, loads of dishes and if given the space I'd have tons of them. Which is silly cause it's just me and the dog and how many dishes can one person use.

Don't know what it is about those dishes that I love,  just know that I do.

So one day not too long ago I was thumbing thru my Somerset Home magazines and came across an article about "Decorative Vintage Dinnerware" by Sandy Faccini Berry. (Somerset Home volume 2 page 44)  She called this Altered Dinnerware and they are stunning!.   Here's her blog.  I was in love (again) and now I could start collecting some nice vintage dinnerware and make it altered.

So that idea was sitting on the back burner waiting patiently for the perfect timing when I read a DIY on the Graphic Fairy blog about some platters gone altered. Again I was inspired. The ones on the Graphic Fairy were done by the the sisters at Nice and Easy Antiques. You can see the tutorial from them here.

Okay so here's the platter I started with. There are some chips but I thought it would add to the look of vintage I was going for.

I had picked out some scrapbooking paper that went really well with the dish and decided it would be my background piece.

So to get a shape that would look good inside on the platter I turned the dish upside down and used the lip as my guide. The lip is the piece that the dish sits on and is shaped around the flat part of the platter. You'll know what I mean when you turn your dish over.

So my first piece of paper was cut out and now it needed to be enhanced.  

I wanted the dish to say something and designed it for a dining room/ kitchen so my words had to be about food, and I wanted to say it in French.  Born Bon Appetite. Not original but it would do. I found the perfect free font for it on Dafont.

I knew that the image of the fork, knife and spoon over at the Graphic Fairy would be part of the collage along with 3 other images. This collage was done digitally on photoshop elements. Images came from the Graphic Fairy and Playing with Brushes. Below is the digital collage I did.

So now that the above image was done I had to free hand cut it so that a border of the first paper (scrapbook paper) would show all around the edges.
From the tutorial from the two sisters I knew my first piece of paper would be glued with spray glue. The second piece I did with mod podge.  I am happy with it and it will be going with me this weekend to my first show.

I added a platter easel and it's done. Hope you like it.

Men's Shirt Pillows

A few days ago I showed you how to deconstruct a man's shirt and you can see that tutorial here. Now lets get to the pillow making.

First off let me tell you what I've learned from trial and error. It's best to buy a man's extra large shirt. If the shirt goes by neck size I would go no lower than a 17" neck.  This way when you cut off the sleeves and collar you have enough of the front to make a large pillow that places the pocket in a good place.  Second when placing your pattern onto the front keep the cutting and sewing lines away from the buttons. If you can't do that then you'll need to remove that button


Okay so now decide on the size of the pillow you want. I opted to buy  pillow forms, just because I think its neater looking and also because I wasn't sewing closed the button area and I thought the fiber fill could leak out. I purchased my 16" pillow forms from Joanne's and was very lucky that they had them at 50% off plus that weekend there was a 20% off coupon on top of that, score!

I always have a roll of kraft paper that comes in handy for making patterns and did so for my pillows, making  it  a 17" square.  I added the additional 1" all around to give me enough sewing allowance plus allow a loose look to the pillows. .

I place my pattern  on the shirt front (making sure that the shirt is totally buttoned up) paying attention to where the button line would be and also the pocket. Most of the ones I made the button line is center but I also liked the look of the button area being a bit off to the side. The pocket looked best if it's down a bit from the top of the pillow. I then traced the pattern onto the fabric and then cut. I used a sharpie marker for my tracing figuring it was going to be cut off so it was okay to do that, maybe?

Okay sewed all four sides, snipped the corners so they wouldn't bunch up, unbuttoned the shirt, turned inside out, pressed and inserted pillow and viola!. It's pretty easy.

The first pillow I made looked like this right from the sewing machine. Yawn..... it was boring looking to me. It looked clean, crisp, like a well dressed man, but it didn't fit in with the decorating scheme I was going after.

So I tea dyed it and the coloring was better but there was another problem.  Not sure if you can see it in the photo but there's a streak down the side of the buttons that makes the pillow look dirty. My guess is that no customer will want to buy a pillow that looks dirty no matter how cute it thinks it is. Luckily I can just bleach it out and start again.  Since then I've learned what not to do when tea dying and will gladly share that with you on another post.

So after the tea dye I'm still yawning........ though not so much. Just didn't have that zing I was looking for. So I then did one more thing and made up some small covered buttons with some contrasting shirt material  and glued them on top of the existing buttons.  Now it's better, not perfect but better.   Love to hear what you think about it .Juror is out if I'll make buttons for the rest of  the pillows. Oh yeah I took away the button on the pocket that was a bit of over kill. 

My hope is that when I get all 15 pillows out on display at the craft show they all will look great!