Tutor Hat

How to get (almost) perfect letters painted onto fabric.

(My first tutorial! Tutor hat - get it? :)

I needed a birthday gift for my soon-to-be-sis-in-law, and wanted it to be somewhat themed for this season of her life (it being wedding week for her). So, I decided on a Honeymoon Bag - a beach bag filled with beach stuff (they are headed to Aruba).  I wanted something I could personalize, so I found this great beach bag that was yellow and white with this neat roping and grommets up the side. I searched around on pinterest for an easy way to help me "print" on fabric without really printing on fabric with a printer, but I found nothing.  SO, I came up with this technique! (can also be done with images too!)

What you need:

paper

printer (optional)

pencil

paint

paint brush (small)

painter's tape (any tape will do, just had to keep going with the P's ;)
pretzels (optional)

STEP 1  Print out whatever it is you wish to paint in the size you wish to paint it. (if you're not too confident with a paint brush, chose a bolder font.)

*Now I don't have a printer in my apt, so I instead typed up what I wanted in Word and then traced it off the computer screen (carefully) I don't recommend doing it this way, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

STEP 2   Tape your design down to your fabric.  With your pencil, sharpened to a sharp point, carefully start poking holes in the paper. As you poke each hole, stick the pencil point into the fabric and spin the pencil a bit - enough to make a dot. You can poke lots of holes, but then later on that's more marks you have to be sure to cover. I just poked as many as I would need, in key points for each letter. Just imagine you were making a dot-to-dot for yourself. (which is actually what you're doing!)

I peel the page back from time to time to make sure I'm making the dots okay.

Here you can see the papers I used..

See my dots?

STEP 3 Connect the dots! (and sing "connect the dots, la la lala :)

Use your paint and small brush to connect the dots.  I found it VERY helpful to have the paper I used for the dots in front of me to reference when I got confused with which dot went which dot.

Almost half-way there.  Fabric I used (being canvas) not so easy to get perfect lines since it's not a smooth fabric.

Almost done... (by this point I have almost finished watching/listening to "Nightmare in Jamestown" - the 2nd documentary I watched on Netflix while doing this project. :)

DONE! Phewf!

STEP 4: Reward yourself with the pretzels! What? You ate them already!? 

It's FOR SURE not perfect, but I kinda like the "imperfect" look. It's now ready to get stuffed with beach supplies!

This technique has it's flaws - one being if you wanted to paint in white/pastels on a certain fabric, the pencil marks would be tough to hide.  But I suppose you could use colored pencils.

Some may find the painting part tedious, I found it relaxing.

Hope someone finds this post helpful!

Caleb quote...

While eating lunch at Costco, looking through coupons, Caleb sees a Cheez-it coupon and asks to buy them. To which Daddy answered "your gonna turn into a cheez-it!"
Caleb's quote: "I want to! Then I can eat myself!
7.5 years old

SUPER BOWL CHAMPS HAT!!

The day the Giants won Super Bowl XLVI....

What fun! The NY Football Giants made it to the Super Bowl!

We LOVE the Giants and of course we LOVE to eat! :)

The weeks leading up to it my sis and I started thinking about what we'd eat... First thing that made the menu was my Buffalo Chicken Pizza (which is one of my most favoritest things to eat!) and of course we eat that with blue cheese.... then we realized it's BLUE cheese and the madness of our cheeky NY GIANTS Super Bowl menu evolved from there!

Now mind you, for the NFC championship game, I couldn't eat until it was over (and I tired!) And I found out I was not the only one. But turns out, for the Super Bowl it was a good distraction. Normally I need a good distraction while watching an intense game or I'll go nuts. (like Superbowl XLII and this past NFC championship game I played solitaire on the iPad and only looked up when the ball was snapped.... I know, I'm a bit nutso!)

The spread....

 It was YUMMY!

 Kelly's guac piped with sour cream

Mom's contribution

Hubby's Favorite 

 

Emily's yummy meatballs on a "ROLLE" (This is where I would say I got carried away)

Blue Lemonade (Glasses to the left were ones my Grandpa gave out at the Shell station he once owned)

 Crab dip by Kelly

Danielle's DELISH blue velvet cupcakes! 

THE pizza :)

Saw these on Pinterest! 

 Our ode to Victor Cruz's touchdown dance

Justin brought over his big (52"?) TV and set it up in the living room. (My Dad cut out Bradshaw from the ledger and taped him to it :)

Dad and Mom (who we could hear yelling from the living room... I'm talking mostly of Mom!) set themselves up in the back room, but soon migrated to the living room because their TV was a second behind ours and could hear us cheering/jeering before their play was over.

The stoic Andy and Christian. 

If you notice, neither of them show much emotion at all

... until the end of course!

Kelly talking about how it's the quarterback who throws the ball.

Justin had a lot to say (I believe he was asking the Ref for a pass interference flag here... he never got it)

Kelly still talking about the quarterback :)

Just kidding, not sure what she's talking about

Checking in on Dad and Mom

Interception?

Laquanna is excited... Justin and Josh aren't quite convinced yet

Andy and Justin "shhhhhhing" everyone.

I like how Josh is looking for a response from Andy here... sorry... it's not over yet.

Emily taking time to pray :)

I believe this was me questioning the Bradshaw touchdown

None of these above pics were taken during the last few plays of the game... the good stuff is on video!

The last play of the game....

I can watch this over and over and still smile!

Click on this one to see it a bit bigger and better quality..

There he is! The ELIte MVP!

Andy out of his 2 week coma and Auntie Em enjoying Caleb sitting with her!

The VICTORY photo 

which we may or may not have sent to some friends in NE ;)

HUGE THANKS
to Jana, our photographer :)