#CraftLife #LadyMWears || DIY Carved Stamp + Printed Sweater + “Crafty Mullet”

Oh what a mash up of crafty-fashion-goodness I have for y’all today!  Remember a while back when I introduced the #PickmyProject series?  Well just to remind you (and for those who missed it – shame on you!) I had you guys participate in helping me to pick out a design element for my next project.  I was planning to fancy-up a plain American Apparel sweatshirt I acquired from a clothes swap with a self-carved stamp.  Guess what?!  Nows the time when you FINALLY get to see which design won!

MATERIALS:

Main materials needed for this project are a doodle of some sort, and stamp carving tools.  I got my tools from this handy-dandy kit at Michael’s, but you can buy them individually at most craft stores.

• a plain t-shirt or sweater to stamp on
• masking tape
• fabric paint
• sponge brush
• band-aids … those dang carving tools are sharp!
• tailors chalk
• iron

Generally I followed the same steps from Minna’s tutorial, but just so you get an idea…

1. This is my doodle once I rubbed it onto my carving block.
2. My initial carving of the stamp.
3. After the initial carving I did several test-runs to see where it needed some more shaving (I left all my lines pretty thick on the first go-round to leave myself some breathing room).  Most of the corrections I made were to make the negative space deeper, as I was picking up a lot of ink in spots there still.  The bottom right picture is my original doodle, starting from there going counter-clockwise are my revisions.
4. I marked my sweater for stamp placement using tailors chalk.  I used a half-drop pattern with a good amount of negative space since the stamp itself is fairly large (about 3×2 in.)

1. I used masking tap to block off the ribbing and seams of each section as I stamped to give the appearance of the fabric being pre-printed before it was sewn.
2. To apply the paint to the stamp I used a foam brush, lightly dabbed it in the paint, then applied it to the stamp in a sweeping motion (as opposed to dabbing).  I found this gave me the cleanest, most even coverage.  If you are only using your stamp for paper, you could just use regular stamp ink – you could even try this on fabric, I just figured the fabric paint would hold better.  Has anyone done it the other way?
3. The more I stamped, the more I got the hang of it (sort of wish I did more practices!).  Let the paint completely dry, then heat set on the OPPOSITE SIDE with an iron.
4. Finished product!  After washing I got a little bit of fading, but thats also because I heat set my paint right on the print (hence the capital letters of warning above)

Sweatshirt – American Apparel from clothes swap, Blazer – Thrifted, Scarf – Vintage, Leggings – American Apparel, Socks – Gap, Shoes – JCrew, Glasses – Warby Parker