I think you'll notice me!

Hi folks, I'm up to date with my work for this week anyway. Next week I have to get cracking with the Masterclass samples for my workshop and demonstrations at the Craft Barn Extravaganza at the end of May, beginning of June, but, for today....I am done! There's been a mix of light showers and lovely warm sunshine today, so I managed to get some gardening done too - I've put up a willow trellis behind my bench and planted Sweet Peas and Nasturtiums along it, planted more of the Summer bulbs, transplanted some Sunflowers and Sweet Peas into big pots and put those outside and also planted a new rose that was given to me by my friend Jan who called to see me this week. Whew! 

I've also caved in and got some slug pellets - these ones are organic and much safer around pets than the usual ones. They are really tiny and I've been very careful to hide them under the plants...just hope they work as those pesky slime trailers are out and about again now. Ugh! 

I am all set for tomorrow now and will be at Card-Io in Pemberton, Wigan from 10am-4pm. Hope to see some familiar faces there.....those of you whose email addresses I "have" please come armed with them for me as I lost almost everyone's contact details a while ago! It's always a fun and busy day at Wendy's shop and I get well looked after too, which is always nice.

You should be able to spot me in the shop as I'll be wearing my latest creation! 

It's pretty bright! I bought a (neon) pink sweatshirt and painted it using Deco Art products. PI had enlarged some of my quotes and the Doo Lally Pip logo for me and my first task was to draw around the words on the back of the paper using a pencil. I then painted the words using Deco Art Ink Effects. After thirty minutes I ironed the words onto the sweatshirt - the beauty of this medium is that you can make your mistakes on paper not on your fabric! Materials with more than 30% cotton need to be sprayed with a special prepping medium first but are then good to go. 
The words came out beautifully, but I did want a slightly more dramatic effect than the subtle black of the ink, so I painted over them using Deco Art So Soft fabric paint. This really gave me the strong look that I wanted.

Next I had to re draw my Doo Lally Pip "Moochin'" character to make him much bigger. As I drew the original this wasn't too tricky for me! I then used a fine brush to go over the pencil lines using black Ink Effects and ironed onto the sweat shirt as before. Next I squeezed out several colours of So Soft and began painting my Moochin' boy. I stippled different colours onto his T shirt to give a similar effect as the one I get when I stamp onto inky kitchen paper. The paints are really easy to work with - they flow well when you brush them on and the colours mix beautifully to create things like flesh tones.  The white is very strong as you can see.
Once I had painted him and he had dried, I used a finer brush to paint the black outlines back in and to add his features and shading dots. I then finished off by adding pink and purple circles with black centres to tie in with the packaging design on my Doo Lally Pip stamp range.
The best bit is that once the paints have dried for 48 hours they are permanent - no need to iron or heat set! They are washable and durable - brilliant! Oh, the only thing to remember is to pre-wash the garment without using any fabric conditioner before you start painting. The next thing on my list of things to paint are some white canvas shoes! The paints and Ink Effects are available from good crafts stores that stock PI products....if they don't have them, they can order them for you. 
Here's me wearing the sweat shirt, though the image is in reverse as I took it via the mirror, having no one to take the picture for me. 

 Please don't look too closely at my hands though....now I know you all just did.....as I had just come in from the garden and popped the top on to take a quick snap before getting into the shower. I completely forgot how soily my hands were - makes a change from ink I suppose!
I had to laugh when I came in from the garden earlier on. Tara pretty much claims the conservatory as her own, Thomas tends to loll around in my bedroom or my Doo Lally room when he isn't prowling about the fields. However, I was very amused to see him snugly settled into Tara's static carrying case with her quite happily sitting on the rocking chair....

 I was also very surprised that she wasn't doing her usual hissing drama queen act, but, when I walked back through half an hour later I saw this scene.....

 ....and it did make me wonder what had been going on in my absence! Lol! 
Well, I hope to see lots of you tomorrow and I'll try and remember to take some photos if I get the chance. Have a great weekend everyone.