As many of you know, we recently moved and I've had decorating on the brain. If you follow me on Pinterest you know that I have gotten a tad obsessed with Macie's room in particular. I've been pinning things like I'm a millionaire ... a girl can dream right?? One of my big ideas for her room as been a gallery wall. I love the idea of all sorts of different pictures and frames being all eclectic and fun on her wall. It was this eclectic thinking that hit me when I got an awesome box of goodies in the mail. Don't you love when you get fun mail? I do. It's always way better to get new art supplies in the mail rather than bills and cheesy ads. Anyway - back to my fun mail. DecoArt sent us their new product to try, InkEffects and people, it's so cool. It will be sold starting next week at Jo-Anns and yeah, you're going to want to try it. They sent their full line of colors and their basecoat spray. I have so many ideas for this stuff now that I've had a chance to work with it.
I'm going to be straight with you - I was WAY WAY nervous about this project because this product requires a little bit of a learning curve and I'm more of a jump right in kinda girl. Heed my warning - fight the urge, don't jump right in. You'll be so much happier if you test this bad boy out first. It's so worth it. The basic principle of InkEffects is that you can paint something on paper and let it dry and then iron the painted picture onto fabric and BAM - custom fabric/design/art/project!
Because I have been on the eclectic art gallery wall kick, I decided to make a silhouette picture of Macie. I have been eyeing a few on Pinterest and all of them seemed to take a lot of steps. Friends, InkEffects made it SO much easier. All you need is some fabric, a picture, DecoArt InkEffects, a paint brush, an iron and a frame.
I took a few cute pictures of Macie while she was zoned out watching TV (don't judge) and printed them out in black and white. I had picked up some pink fabric on clearance at Jo-Anns that didn't have any cotton in it, but if it had been over 30% cotton, I would have needed to spray it with DecoArt InkEffects' basecoat for cotton fabric. After deciding on what color I wanted the silhouette to be, I painted the picture of Macie.
I put a couple coats of the paint on the picture to make sure it was nice and bright and let it dry (In the picture above, the blue paint was my first attempt). After the picture was dry - and saying a little prayer - I got the iron out and laid the picture onto the fabric face down and ironed away. The instructions said to iron the fabric for 30 seconds and to make sure that you keep the iron moving. This is where I had hit my snag during my trial run. I only ironed for 30 seconds on a lower heat setting because I was nervous. The image was dull and didn't fully transfer so I decided to try it for longer. After about a minute and a half of ironing, making sure to move the iron slowly over the image, I carefully peeled the paper off fabric and exhaled. Perfect!!!
I added a little black hair bow to the silhouette because Macie was wearing one in the picture and I wanted to add a little something to the image. After a couple of stitches for the bow, I framed her little face in a black ornate frame I happened to have lying around and ... I LOVE IT! This is the perfect start to Macie's eclectic fun wall of art. What do you think? What ideas do you have for InkEffects? What would you do?
If you want to follow DecoArt and see some of the fun things people are doing - you can follow them on Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube ... I'm sure you know our favorite!
**We wrote this post as part of a paid campaign with DecoArt and Blueprint Social. The opinions in this post are our own.**
PS - Check out some of the other great projects that have been done with InkEffects!!
