Saturday, September 24, 2011

Hand Crafted Christmas Gift Ideas - Bleach Pen Art Ideas

Tonight's post is the 4th in this series that will run until Christmas. This one is for a way to customize fabric clothing, especially tees, using the common bleach pen.

This is an ingenious and easy way to make personalized, custom designed tees and other items for your holiday gift giving. Once again, I found this in one of my CraftGossip daily email newsletters. The tutorial post is from Dora, one of the gals on the ShowTellShare blog, and the link is here.

It's important for you to read both this September post and an earlier one from February. The link I'm giving you tonight links to that earlier post. In that earlier one, she discusses t-shirts only. In this month's post, she discusses table linens but goes on to share some more bleach pen techniques with us that affects what we might do with tees. Both posts should be read before attempting this.

If you cannot draw, I imagine stencils would work. That's what I am going to try. I can just see a little one getting a tee embellished using this method, with dinosaurs or sports symbols or flowers or pets or any other special interest icon on it. Adults will be equally impressed that you cared enough to make something perfectly suited to their tastes. The list is endless. Monograms, fave sayings, nicknames, and more come to mind.

In addition to tees, I might go further and try sock bottoms, fabric totes, and more. I will rely on Dora's tips on which fabrics work best, since she has already done the leg work (or pen work?) for me. She explains how to give backing support to the fabric while working, how long to let the gel sit, and other things we might otherwise have to learn the hard way.

For other projects in my series, just look along the right sidebar for the label "Christmas Gift Projects." I hope to post only tips that do not require knitting, crocheting, machine sewing, tatting, embroidery, or any other skilled technique.

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