Ideas for decorating canvas bag?
 

My DD's preschool gives out canvas bags to be decorated (instead of using backpacks) and I'm having trouble coming up with ideas for it.

If I do stamp on it, can I just use classic ink, or do I need to use paint?

Any ideas you have for designs would be great! I've been having a creative block the last few months, and I can't come up with anything! ARRGGGHHH!

Sara

My daughter did one with acrylic paints and hand-prints. All the little kids in the MOPS group made one. The grown-ups poured the paint in a thin layer in a dish. Kids just placed both hands in the dish and then pressed them onto the bag. Then the mommies wrote names and added a few squiggles or stars with paint tubes.

I decorated Canvas bags and gave them for Christmas last year. I stamped them with Craft ink and then, once they dried for several days, I laid a towel on top of them and ironed them just to set them. They turned out really pretty. I used a friend's retired stamp set (Painted Garden, maybe??) and just stamped flowers around the outer edge. Then in the middle I stamped "Mary's Stuff" or whatever with a few cute butterflies and bumble bees. HTH! :)

I did one using Staz-on and paint prints...came out great and I get lots of compliments on it...

Could you stamp some outlined images and then let your DD color them in with fabric markers?

What if you stamped her name with the headline alphabet, and decorated the rest using the butterflies from bold butterflies.

You could use just about any kind of ink, but I think either fabric paint or staz on ink would be best :)

Let me know how it turns out ;)

Would I be able to use Sharpies on the fabric, or would it bleed through? I have colored Sharpies that I use for crafts and was thinking maybe I could do some outlines and color them.

Thanks for the great ideas!

Well, m'dear, that would be awesome if I had either of those sets!! :p I do have the travel set with the litle boy and girl (I can't remember the name off hand...it has the car and airplane stamps, too) and I thought mabye I could use that, but I don't think the scale is right...the stamps aren't big enough.

Check out today's Carol Duvall show at HGTV.com

Dee Gruining did a canvas handbag using stamps and acrylic paint.

Let's see what I remember... first she masked off a triangle in the center of the bag. Then she applied three different shades of yellow, lt, med, dark and blended them together. She used a piece of sponge to apply the paint.

Once that was dry, she stamped a sunflower image using one of the yellows for the petals and copper for the center of the flower. I think she did two regular sunflowers and then a silhouette sunflower--all of them overlapped but were not fully on the triangle area.

Next she applied a checkerboard stamp loaded with a brown paint in random areas and then she stamped a few random dots (using the eraser end of a pencil) in the various colors she used for the flowers, etc. Can't remember if she added anything else, but what I've described sounds awfully simple for Dee. She loves to embellish.

This was against a black canvas background and it turned out beautifully.

Rainsong

On the canvas bags is using the paint alone ok or would it be better to mix it with the fabric medium?

Can you use the reg classic pads?

Carol asked Dee about that and she said just straight paint. I've painted on fabric before and always used the fabric medium. You could try a scap of fabric both ways and see which you like best.

Rainsong

Cool that they asked the same question.

I tried fabric stamping for the first time this weekend. My daughter's $4.92 el cheapo preschool backpack from Wal-Mart's was my first victim :0 She loves it (she's only 4) and I look at it as a learning experience.

So my learnings include:

I tend to apply lots of pressure to my stamps. Not so good with paint as it's much more liquid-y (what a word!). I found it better to place the stamp where I wanted it and let it set for a little bit to allow the paint to soak into the material.

I had to stamp 3-4 times to get the colors as dark as I wanted (even starting with dark colored paint) so the stamp liner upper thing (yep, it's late here and I'm going to bed) is a help.

Also, I'd go for bold stamps and not stamps that are very detailed/lined as the paint tends to spread out some.

I like the look of adding the fabric medium. I cleaned up the paint with the fabric medium and wanted to touch a part up and decided to use just plain paint. You can definately tell the difference. The plain paint looks it sits on top of the fabric. I really like the way the fabric medium and paint looks much better.

So I'll guess I'll try out my canvas bags and let everyone know if I learn anything else. :0

Canvas Bags
 

I'm thinking of a couple things but not sure how helpful they'd be...

1) With CTMH we can use our regular ink pads on a dark t-shirt transfer and that way we can use all 60+ of our colors. I know that CTMH and SU inks have different qualities...so I'm not sure if it'd work with what you're calling "classic" inks or not. But it's really pretty cool! I did my son's each a pillowcase with construction trucks and their names on them.

2) Another thought...my oldest son just had a class project where they did "frog" t-shirts (his class is Mrs. Franck's Freaky Frogs). She printed out a picture of a frog. Each child then colored in the frog with fabric crayons (you have to color REALLY hard and dark) and then an adult ironed it on to the shirt. Keep in mind if you do this that you have to outline the printed picture with a black crayon...if you color just the inside and don't outline it then you'll end up with exactly that...a general shaped object with no defining edge. Not really a stamping idea...but a way to get her involved.

3) Also, you can use inkjet transfers and do something on the computer. We did t-shirts for my dh for Father's Day one year where I used an ink pad to ink up their feet and put them on paper. Then scanned them...copied and pasted them so I had a lot of feet. Printed onto transfer paper and ironed all over the shirt with the words "We walk all over our daddy".

Lots of options!

HTH.

Jane

My family has stamped on T-shirts with SU craft ink, let it dry to the touch (only a few minutes) and then tossed it into the dryer for 15 minutes or so to heat set. It's worked great!! Laundering has not affected the images.