Today I designed a pillow using an old french rose label from the Graphics Fairy. To make your own, you'll need to pull your chosen graphic into a word processing program - I used "Pages" on my mac. Then, bring in a text box and pick a font you like to add whatever text suits your fancy. I have a favorite font for things like this - it's called "Jane Austen". (How can you go wrong with a name like that?) It's feminine and old fashioned looking. You can download it free here. The oval on the bottom of the graphic seemed fitting for a monogram . . . I put in ours.
So, once you have your design just the way you like it, you need to get it ready for the printer. Cut a piece of freezer paper and your fabric, to 8 1/2 x 11 inches. The freezer paper gives the fabric body so that it can go through the printer. Iron the shiny side of the freezer paper onto your fabric. It will adhere very quickly using a dry iron on the cotton setting. I used a thin cotton fabric and even with the freezer paper my printer would not recognize the fact that there was paper there, so I had to use spray adhesive to add a piece of cardstock to the freezer paper side. That gave a nice, heavy backing to the fabric and then it worked just fine. If you use something like canvas, the freezer paper will be enough.
Since you're already limited to the size of a sheet of paper due to what the average printer will accept, I think it's a good idea to enlarge the clip art to the size of a full sheet of paper in order to get the biggest pillow possible.
It printed out great - the first time I tried!
Then, just pull the freezer paper off the back of the fabric.
You'll have a piece of printed fabric ready to create whatever your little heart desires! I'm making my printed fabric into pillows for the guest room with twin beds - one for each bed. Both pillows have French script. One reads, "Good Night", and the other reads "Dream Away"! I'm going to try spraying some sample printed fabric with a fabric protector. I doubt that printer ink is washable, so you'll want to avoid getting it wet etc. Tonight I finished the one that says "Good Night" - and I'm going to take that advice and finish the other one tomorrow.
Bonne Nuit!
Linking to:
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Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage
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Funky Junk Interiors
