Flowers for Mothers Day

Monday, May 11, 2015

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day yesterday. I had a great afternoon with my mom, making her lunch and doing a little catching up. 

I don't know about you guys but I've been noticing that as our parents get older they get a little pickier about gifts. Lets be honest after you reach a certain point in our lives you get to a place where you don't really want or maybe even really need things. Therefore it gets harder for us kids to give our parents gifts.  So whats a daughter to do when you know going to a store and purchasing something is not going to fit the bill? You do a craft project... This is a project that I have been wanting to do for pretty close to a year. Not necessarily as a gift but for myself. Um, I've been procrastinating. 

Last year I started seeing the awesome Donna Downey doing little tutorials for the Faber-Castell Gelatos over here at Design Memory Craft. Now of course as it sometimes happens, one video leads to another, then another, and a buying spree ensues. I'm not saying that's how this happened but it could have. Anyhow, somewhere along the way I saw a tutorial for a very abstract floral work with the gelatos. Blobs of color were put down, a little water was added then details with a fabric pen. It was pretty awesome and it looked like something I could do and actually achieve a piece of work that looked like I might be a little artsy.

Needless to say this project was inspired by that. I have literally spent a few hours trying to find that tutorial so I could rewatch it and then give credit where credit is due but I can't find it. That said, if someone runs across this and knows where I saw that I'd love to know.




I managed to only get a quick photo before it was dragged up to my mom's so I apologize for the poor lighting. 

As I said before it was a really quick project, taking about two hours total. I started with a small 100% poly v-neck tee from Michael's, the set of gelatos from the Designing with Gelato's Kit. I literally put my colors down abstractly, kind of in blobs and then took a paint brush and water and pulled my color from the center out, adding a swipe from the tube of what ever color I was using  if I thought it needed more color. Then, because I'm impatient. I dried the tee with my blow drier and went to work drawing in all the details with a Pentel Gel Roller for Fabric. I'd give you a link for this but I just found out they have been discontinued by the manufacturer. 

I really don't think the picture does the tee justice. It turned out very water color like because I used quite a bit of water to activate the creamy gelato color on the material. Plus the material wicked and the moisture spread. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out.  Now both the gelatos and the pen are supposed to be colorfast and permanent after they dry so my fingers are crossed that this is truly the case. But to be sure. I think I need to do one for myself so I can verify it.  I'll let you know how that goes.