Sunday, September 25, 2016

Makeful Challenge - The Apron

A few weeks ago I received a lovely package in the mail from Makeful. Inside, a blank apron for me to craft upon and enter into another awesome Makeful Challenge.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do for this challenge: A mash up potato stamp and painting repeat pattern of me, Kyle and Nomi’s faces!

To start I did a mock up of the pattern idea in Adobe sketch on my phone. Great little program for playing around with ideas. I highly recommend the download. Takes some getting used to, but very satisfying results once you get the hang of it.

With my pattern designed the next step was to gather my materials.

Materials
1. Potatoes (three different sizes)
2. Paints (fabric if you are intending on washing these guys, I actually used acrylic because I was
3. Paint Brushes
4. Jar of water
5. Newspaper to cover you work surface for easy clean up.
6. Felt (optional). To use as a stamping surface under your apron. Helps with unevenly cut potatoes, so you can press down and get a more even print.
7. Apron

Next step was a quick test on a piece of muslin. I wanted to test my colors and see how painting on the fabric would work. Once I was satisfied with the test results, I just dove in and started making the print.

I used my adobe sketch drawing as a guide, and laid down all the potato stamps faces and painted flowers first.
 
Once the base of the pattern was set and dry, I then began painting on the face and flower details. Final step was painting on the hair.

After that I let the apron dry and voila, my repeat pattern was complete.

I am absolutely thrilled with the results of my repeat pattern, something that doesn’t always happen. I think taking the time to sketch first and then do a test really helped. In fact I kind of love my test piece and want to do something with it!

I’ve decided to name the pattern Happy Home, because when I showed it to my daughter that’s what she said after seeing it. It seems fitting.

Here is a little insta story I made as well of the process:


This was a super simple and fun craft, and now my husband and I have a sweet little apron to dawn while cooking our traditional Saturday morning pancake breakfast! Mmm…