Are You Wearing Green Today?

In honor of Saint Patrick's day, I thought I would start if off right with a nice big bowl of Lucky Charms.

Then following along with my holiday onesie for The Bubb, I cut a shamrock out of felt for him to wear today.

 

He wouldn't stop sticking his tongue out at me today, well only when I had the camera up! Silly boy. Oh and check out his awesome new green socks. I saw them at Target and could not resist them, they came in a three pack with two other pairs of awesome striped socks. It was weird to actually buy him some clothes since I have two really super sister in-laws who have given me clothes from their boys (as well as some stellar grandmothers!). He is one lucky little man. Have a good Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy President's Day

In honor of President's Day I decided to change up Bubbington's Valentine's Day Onesie to be appropriate for today instead. I took an image of President George Washington's head and cut it out of felt. I thought, first President's Day, first president.

Instead of attaching Velcro to the other side of the felt, like what I did for the Valentine onesie, I just put the felt right onto the Velcro, and guess what felt sticks really well to Velcro. So it made this really easy!

And The Bubb seemed to enjoy it too, or perhaps he just liked sitting in the bucket!

Be My Valentine?

As some of you may know I don't like Valentine's Day, or well, any Hallmark holiday for that matter, but I won't get into that just now. But I was thinking about it yesterday and well I don't want The Bubb not to like holidays just cause I don't like them. Because in a few years when he is in school and other kid oriented activities you celebrate all holidays...so to be fair I thought I would give him a little valentine spirit as he might want to celebrate; although at this point he is probably more interested in licking his toes :) which is super adorable by the way.

I decided to change one of his plain gray onesies into a Valentine's day outfit, but I didn't want it to permanently be an outfit for one day...so I thought, lets use some Velcro. That way on other holidays that are coming up I can change out what is on the front of his onesie, although he may outgrow it before we can get through too many holidays :)

Supplies I used: Velcro, white and red felt, plain onesie, glue gun

I started by taking the onesie and figuring out where I wanted to stitch on the Velcro. I marked it and then sewed it down.

For my felt selection I wanted to use a darker red for a boy heart, rather than cherry red. In order to hide the Velcro stitches (although I could have just used a glue gun on this too I suppose) I cut out a white heart to go behind it.

I figured out where I wanted the heart to sit on the shirt and pinned the other Velcro half to the white heart so that I knew where to sew it on.

Next I took my hot glue gun and glued the red heart on top of the white heart. I did consider sewing it on, but well, I wanted to play with my hot glue gun.

After waiting for it to "dry" I Velcroed it on the onesie.

Happy Valentine's Day!

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 :(

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.

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