Today it's the turn of fabric paint ( or dimensional paint, call it what you will). Fabric paint is a bit of a misnomer as it can be used on any surface, is a bit like icing a cake, and dries with a permanent slightly raised finish.
But, the manufacturers Tulip decided in their wisdom to withdraw it and replace it with a poor inferior version now available as Tulip paint. The paint itself is fine, but the bottle shape and more importantly the nozzle is frankly hopeless. It just doesn't work.
So our old colorpoint bottles are worth their weight in gold. Of course the paint in them was used up a long time ago, so much of our time is taken up decanting from new bottles into our old bottles. Usually involving a lot of mess and many ruined clothes.
We now have a huge collection of paint from all different sources. Some colours have been mixed especially for us, some colours I have mixed myself and many more are standard colours.
Here are just some of the variety which end up in the little bottle.
Silver glitter - we go through about 150 bottles of that stuff every couple of months.
So what do we use all this paint for?
Well, every card in our range has hand painting on it in some form or another. Outlining appliqued fabric, adding textural beads of paint and the hand painted lettering.
Here is a rather crappy video of one of the large cards (which has already been embroidered with flowers and sequins) having the detail finished off with paint, in this case the stems of the champagne flutes.
Apologies for the poor quality of the film - the only available cameraman had gone to bed, so I was holding the camera with my left hand while painting with my right. Not easy.
And while we're at it, here is another rubbish video, this time I'm painting the lettering on the card. OK so you have to put your head sideways to see it - I forgot that the camera has to be the right way up. Sorry.
Maybe the next instalment will be more professional.
I love the 'behind the scenes' look at how people create. Thanks for sharing. I hear you about companies changing a good thing. Back in the late 80's-early 90's Delta Ceramcoat made a fabulous fabric dye..not paint , but dye. It dyed the fibers, was super soft and did not just sit on top of the fabric like todays paints. Then for some reason ...Poof..it was gone! It was non toxic and water based so I don't know what the problem was...very sad.
ReplyDeleteReally interesting to read Marion! I loved the videos - so much skill involved, a great insight into your card-making :)
ReplyDelete