I have had this book since I was 3 years old (it’s dated inside the cover 1973). I actually have two in this series, this one and one called “Painting”. I’ve had this idea in my brain for ages to take the exercises in the book, geared at kids obvs, and elevating them to a more grown up project. I’ve always been interested in printing and painting on fabric, and thought hey! Let’s do this thing! So yesterday I pulled out the book and got started on the first exercise.

Finger printing! Yaaay! Hehehe!

I pulled out some scraps of linen, and my Speedball fabric inks and mixed up a shell pink.  Theses inks are for block printing as they are very thick, but they work just great for this method too.

Then I got busy dipping my fingers in the ink and making dotty marks on the fabric. Tip- keep one hand clean ‘cuz the fabric sticks to the ink on your finger so you have to gently pull it off sometimes as you go.

Then I tried making longer marks using the whole tip of my finger, and using two fingers at once to make double dots.

Using one colour only is kinda meh so I added a mustardy citron (mix of yellow with a teeny dab of turquoise and an even teenier dab of red).

And then I added white. I coulda left it as this but you know me, more is more!

I pulled out some stamps I had carved previously, this dotty one to start. I’m using the back of an old small ceramic baking dish from my late gran’s kitchen for my ink & brayer, it’s not really usable for food anymore so printing ink it is.

Then I spotted this wood stamp I got at Maiwa and started adding some more stamp action overtop of the fingerprint base.

Just as a side note- I have a very small art space that’s packed to the gills and no extra table top space, (see some of my paints moved over on the lefthand side?) so the old computer makes a nice place to hang pieces as you’re working- you gotta do what you gotta do right? Haha!

And of course you need metallics in there, it’s a no-brainer. I don’t get why people pu-pu all over using metallic fabrics. I love them. So there. I did some metallic finger dots then some stamping with this flower stamp. I love Lumiere metallic fabric paints, they just glow. The gold is quite translucent so it just adds a light subtle gold print.

Then I used an old pencil, the eraser is all hard and dried out- perfect for printing!- and added some metallic dots sprinkled here and there.

And tada! Some funky unique finished fabric. This chunk is printed on Essex linen, I love the extra texture linen adds to it.

The ink has to cure for a few days then it’ll be usable. Can’t wait to cut into it!

I might also do a giveaway of some of it (I will wash test first to make sure it’s all hunkydory before doing anything like that of course!) so stay tuned!

Have you ever taken a kids project and elevated it to a more grown up project?

With much love,