UNO Birthday Party Roundup

Just wanted to share some birthday party pictures with you to conclude The Bubb Birthday Week :)

We opted to have an UNO themed birthday party to celebrate The Bubb being one year old. We sent out UNO invites

and I made him a Wild card t-shirt for the party using freezer paper stenciling. I had thought about making him an UNO shirt but decided that Wild suited the situation better, plus I've been wanting to try multiple colors on the freezer paper stenciling. It was well, um, interesting. I wouldn't recommend starting with multiple colors especially when you have a one year old trying to climb up your leg while painting!

Finding a black t-shirt proved to be difficult and finally was able to find a long sleeved one at Target and just altered it to be short sleeved.

The party was pretty simple. We made cupcakes and decorated them with white frosting and numbers on top and then just had primary colored accessories for napkins, plates, etc. I hung up the birthday banner that I made.

And we had balloons. I have been dying to have a reason to get some 3 foot balloons. I think that I can die happy now, is that crazy!? Okay so we got one of each color - red, blue, green and yellow. They are actually pretty hard to find and ended up getting them at SF party in San Francisco. We then rented a helium tank because we couldn't get them inflated at the store, as they wouldn't have fit through the door into our cars, not to mention getting all 4 of them to fit! Here we are blowing them up:

Of course we took some pictures with them :) and tied one to The Bubb. You have no idea how amused I was! (FYI if he had been 5 pounds like I had wanted, it is possible that I would have put him in a basket and bought 33 of these balloons in order to get him to hover off the ground. (my brother did some calcs on lift). Anyway not important since he weighed WAY more than that when born, and the parent police probably would have come and frowned at us.

 

The party was lowkey and was exactly what I wanted :) We ate some cake,

opened some presents,

played ball, chased each other around on the deck.

He had a wonderful time and I am so glad that my parents were willing to let us use their house :)

Another Round of Freezer Paper Stenciling

By now you can probably tell that I am pretty addicted to Freezer Paper Stenciling. I bought some Carter's long sleeve onesies at Kohl's a few months back with their $10 gift cards that come in the mail. Hooray for free money! But they were plain, so obviously they needed some embellishment. So I came up with four designs: camping, Sir Bubb, DNA, and an exclamation point. The first three of these I did designs on the front and the back.

This was also my first time cutting out letters, and it is pretty easy, thank goodness for sans-serif fonts.

In case you're still interested, here is the tutorial to Freezer Paper Stenciling and here and here are my previous projects. The Bubb was napping when I took these pictures, so no cute baby model today :(

Freezer Paper Fun, Part II

I had been meaning to decorate more onesies with freezer paper stenciling but the pillow project completely took over my time this past week. But yesterday I finally had time to start this project and woke up this morning to find the paint dry and two fun onesies to wear. (I also made a tutorial about Freezer Paper Stenciling in case anyone would like to try it - it is really easy) After I got him in his outfit, with jacket to head out on errands, he promptly spit up all over it, which made me have to change his jacket, but his happy mood remained throughout the incident! (yeah so I took a few photos of him...)

Tutorial: Freezer Paper Stenciling

Freezer Paper Stenciling is a fast, fun and easy way to make an outfit more interesting (this could be used on any type of fabric project, obviously). Okay so what do you need?

1 Freezer Paper (wax paper doesn't work, it must say "Freezer Paper" on the box. Found at any grocery store)
2 X-acto Knife and Scissors 
3 Fabric
4 Iron

5 Your Image (if you print it onto paper, you'll have to trace it onto the freezer paper with a writing implement of your choosing OR you can print directly onto the freezer paper, on the dull side, if you cut it down to fit your printer)

6 Foam Paint Brushes

7 Fabric Paint (I use Tulip brand, matte. You can get it at Michaels, JoAnns, etc.)

And now that you've gathered your supplies, let the adventure begin!

Step 1 Trace the image onto the freezer paper (for those of us who do not print directly on to it) on the DULL side (i.e. not the shiny side)

Step 2 Cut the image out using an x-acto knife (or scissors if you can manage that somehow). Remember that you are making a stencil, so it is sorta like a negative. The areas that you cut out will get painted, and the areas you don't will stay the color of the fabric. (for example if there are pieces within the image, like airplane windows, cut them out and save them cause you'll iron them back into the cut out area later). If there are teeny tiny pieces start with the smallest sections first and then go to the larger ones, it makes it easier.

Step 3 Iron the freezer paper to the fabric, shiny side down.  Make sure that you iron the edges really well or leaking may occur (which actually happened on the boat, cause I don't think that my iron was fully hot at the time).

Step 4 Put wax paper inbetween the layers of fabric incase the paint bleeds through (especially if you are doing multiple coats of paint.) You can probably use something other than wax paper, it was just the first thing I thought of...

Step 5 Paint, paint, paint. For the boat and plane I did two coats. For the batman onesie awhile back, I did 3 three coats, and the Quincy onesie I did two.  I would probably put 2 or 3 hours inbetween coats, of course you can use a hair dryer to speed up the drying, if you are impatient like me.  Well to be honest I don't always wait until it is completely dry to add another coat.

Note: One problem I haven't solved yet is how to prevent the paint from cracking a little after many washes, or when it stretches across the Bubb's large tummy after eating.  If the fabric won't ever stretch (like on a bag or a regular t-shirt (not onesie), this probably wouldn't be a problem.

Step 6 This is by far the BEST step. Pulling off the freezer paper. Just lift a corner and begin to peel. The first time I didn't think that it would work, but it totally leaves a nice clean edge, it is awesome.  For the little pieces, like the airplane windows, I sorta pinch at the freezer paper and pull it off.  For really small pieces, like Quincy's eyes, etc. I used tweezers to help me.

Step 7 Iron over the finished product, with a cloth between the iron and paint, just to help fuse the paint down.

And you're done! Enjoy your newly made items!!

 

MULTIPLE PAINT COLORS: You can also do Freezer Paper Stenciling with multiple paint colors too although it can be a bit more tricky if it is a small design but it definitely works. I made this shirt for his UNO birthday party. I used the same steps as above except I printed directly onto the freezer paper by cutting the freezer paper to 8.5x11 and then sticking it into the printer to print on the non-shiny side. It was super easy. Then I painted with the different colors and used a foam brush and tiny paint brushes to do the letters. Each color got 2 coats. (And I know I've been complaining about the paint cracking...but it hasn't on this shirt and I think its because it is a shirt and not a onesie made from knits.)

Tips To make it last longer, I always wash them inside out. I think that the paint brand recommends not washing for 72 hours. Also, when painting, I paint/dab in any direction I feel like to get the majority of the paint on and then I use downward brush strokes over all of it, to make the paint all seem to be going in one direction.

This tutorial has been featured on:

Freezer Paper Fun

Wanting to spruce up some plain jane onesies, I decided to try my hand at painting with freezer paper.  I have wanted a batman onesie for a while, and I didn't have a black one that I could alter (and I didn't feel like trying dye) so I opted to do a white logo on blue instead.  And I've been reading Foxtrot comics for the past few weeks (thanks to a birthday gift from my brother) and thought that it would be awesome if Emmett had a Quincy onesie as well, and decided to do green on green.

I started with the basic supplies:

I then cut out my design on the freezer paper, ironed it to the shirt and then painted:

Then I just had to peel off the freezer paper and voila - fun new onesies for the Bubb to wear!