"Poised and Pretty" In an Custom Stamped Apron

Good Morning Every One - my name is Lynne Mizera and I am tickled pink, green and purple to be posting my first ever project as a Susan K. Weckesser Guest Designer.  I have loved every single thing Susan has ever produced since I first came in contact with her amazing line of paper almost three years ago and when I saw the "Poised and Pretty" vintage paper doll stamps I just KNEW I wanted to create something extra special using them and here it is TAAA DAAA.....

 A Custom Designed Apron!

My good friend Christine Modeling the finished apron

Now... I am an Apron Girl... I have more aprons than I do T-shirts and that is because when I am in the middle of the creative process I just DON'T CARE where I wipe my hands, or clean my brushes or my stamps and it is usually on my clothes... so I started wearing aprons to save my clothes.  But at that time aprons had gone out of fashion and the ones I could find were just so basic and ugly I needed to pretty them up - and since I do not sew I began to get creative with my "Apron-wear" and it was then that I discovered that you can color on fabric with Copic markers! Yup AND Shade too! but NOW I have discovered that you can STAMP on fabric also!

a close up of the details... isn't the shading lovely?

So I gathered up my tools: a black Memento ink stamp pad; my Unity stamps - I used the Poised and Pretty Vintage Paper Doll stamp created by Susan and if you love them as much as I did you can find them right here on the Unity Stamp website and a second Unity sentiment stamp; my copic markers and a new, unwashed, unbleached cotton apron.  

  

Before you start stamping it is a good idea to look at your apron and decide where you want your design to be.  Think about the activities you will be doing in that apron, because it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of time stamping and coloring a beautiful design in the corners of your apron if you use the corners to wipe your brushes!  You will notice this apron has a large empty space in the centre because I will be using this one in the kitchen and THAT is where all my food stains end up.

After I had decided where I wanted my images, I stamped my design all over the apron and let it dry for about 10 minutes (knowing me probably less!) At this point if you want to be sure the ink won't run when you start to color you can iron the stamped images on high heat with a dry iron to set the ink into the fabric, but I did not and the ink did not run at all.  That's it... then you just color away!  I was amazed that the fabric had very similar properties to paper and I could shade and blend and lay down color very much like I do on paper, although the fabric does suck up that ink, and just like paper if you really saturate the area the ink will bleed over the lines... so remember Less Is Better, and layer, layer, layer! 

My first images... I was very tentative with the ink... LOVELY!

My Last images.. I was got a little carried away with the ink and you can see the bleeding.

After I had completed coloring my apron I set everything by ironing with a very hot dry iron (no steam) and I have been told that by baking the inks into the fabric with high heat this will allow me to wash my apron without washing out the ink.  the entire project from start to finish took  a little over two hours, and most of that time was deciding what colors to use!  I see a LOT of aprons as gifts this Christmas season!  Enjoy!

Lynne Mizera
Guest Designer for Susan K Weckesser, Inc.