*This post is brought to you in association with the kind folk at Bamber Sew, who very generously provided the fabric paints featured in this post. Thank you Alan, you crazy old sausage, you!*

We were like hyperactive kids at Christmas the day we received the big box of fabric paints, and in all honesty there's not been much else going on here in the By Hand Studio since. We feel we've slightly regressed back to the days of nursery school Arts & Crafts, so much so that even our very own By Hand Boy (Elisalex's 3 year old son) has been getting in on the fabric painting action!

With so many amazing paints to choose from - opaques, pastel pearls, fluorescents, metallics - for a while were pretty stumped as to where to start. So, instead of just diving in like headless chickens delirious with inspiration overload, we put the kettle on and made a list of all the techniques we wanted to try out then allocated the relevant paints to the techniques. Phew.

Top of the techniques-to-try list was stencilling. Specifically stencilling with a geometric tile in order to produce a repeat pattern. Themes that kept coming up on our Pinterest board, 'Stencil', were Islamic and Aztec designs. In terms of colour, we thought we could definitely have more fun with a Navajo-style stencil and the fluorescent paints!

 

Being a first attempt, we cut our design out of cardboard and stencilled onto a piece of scrap calico. Given how beautifully it turned out, next time we'll be cutting the design out of something a little more hardy and re-usable, and not being afraid to paint onto a more precious fabric! That said, we did actually like the slightly rough finish for this project.

 

 

The result was amazing! Using fluorescent paints to recreate the bright reds, pinks and blues synonymous with Aztec design made for a super vibrant fluo print without losing the essence of Aztec. A successful marriage of trends, we reckon - all hail the FluoAztec supertrend!

 

 

 

Not being the kind of folks who encourage waste of any kind, rest assured that we put this now beautiful piece of scrap calico to excellent use. To be continued...