Wearable Art

Cloth Paper Scissors magazine's May/June issue was all about wearable art.  That's something I don't do a lot of (besides jewelry) but when I recently pulled out a solid salmon colored tee shirt that I bought to go with these plaid seersucker cropped pants, I thought it could use a bit of embellishment.

 I started with a sketch of a seahorse (what else) and transferred the design onto a piece of thick craft foam.  I've used foam to make stamps before, but I always cut them into shapes which I then glued onto  some sort of base and dipped in paint to make a print.  This time, I wanted a little more detail.  I'd read that you can simply use a pen to sort of gouge out a design onto the foam and use that to print.

The results were pretty good, for a first try.  Luckily, I thought of putting down an initial layer of a light cream colored paint as a background before I printed my seahorse.  Otherwise, there wouldn't have been enough contrast between the shirt color and the coppery metallic paint I chose to use.  Here is a shot of the prints on the shirt...

 And below is a close-up.  I like it, but I think it still needs something.  I could certainly stitch on a sequin for the eye, and maybe while I've got a needle threaded, I'll do some other embroidery around the border or to add more definition.

Meanwhile, I have four more tee shirts that could use some jazzing up!  I bought these for about $2.50 last summer, thinking the girls would each have fun decorating one, but we never found the time.  We still have another week before camp gets going, so maybe we'll fit it in this year.  And I saw some great (and cheap!) plain white canvas sneakers at K-mart the other day - they would be fun to personalize with paint!  Think of the possibilities!