Rainy Day Fabric

We found ourselves with an abundance of rain today, accompanied by thunder and lightening.



This little guy decided to bravely sit the storm out on our fencepost, letting the rain slide off his back.

We took a different approach to weathering the storm: secure inside with stamps and ink. Audrey got to work with her own stamp pad and ink on blue paper, while I made some custom fabric.

A couple weeks ago I went in search of fabric for a project I've been meaning to get around to all summer. Not finding anything that stuck out at me (for a price I was willing to pay), and itching to try out this tutorial from the talented Geninne Zlatkis that I've been eyeing for months, I decided that this rainy day was the perfect day to create some custom fabric. As luck would have it, I had carved my two stamps using the tutorial last night. Of course, never able to completely follow directions, I used wood carving tools instead of the tools she suggests (because that's what I was able to find on short notice when I decided I MUST make stamps last night) and in an attempt to be frugal, I used both sides of my "carving block" (that was actually a blending eraser) and didn't cut completely around the edge as to not chop off part of the stamp on the other side. Not cutting around the stamp completely made the actual stamping a little bit tricky, so maybe I'll follow directions next time.

I used duck cloth as the background fabric for my stamping and, since this fabric won't be laundered, used regular ink pads (one the Color Box brand she suggests, which did work best) for my color. I was in a foliage sort of mood when I drew my stamp patterns. One is a simple leaf and the other is supposed to resemble an abstract seedling shape, but now on the fabric it makes me think of scissors. I'm still going to call it a successful first attempt. Now if I can just squeeze in some hours at the sewing machine.