While taking inventory of the supplies that I have left, I realized that I didn't have many more clothing labels left from the order I made with a fellow etsy seller. She made beautiful labels for me, but I decided to try my hand at making my own.
I have seen the technique of stamping cotton fabric tape and thought, hey why the heck not.
Supplies:
cotton stamping tape
screen printing paint
mini letter stamps
pinking shears
iron
paper towel
foam (scraps are fine)
It was a lot of trial and error till I finally got the results that I wanted. Its always a good idea to test out your stamping technique before you go stamping your tape. That way you know how much pressure to use when applying paint, stamping, etc.
How To:
Step 1. Unravel and lay out the cotton tape about a foot out of the roll on a flat hard surface on top of a sheet of white paper to protect the surface you are using. Keep a moist paper towel sheet handy for any mishaps.
Step 2. Apply paint to the foam. Using your finger or something hard and flat, lightly press the paint into the foam.
Step 3. Carefully dab the stamp onto the paint-soaked-foam to get nice coverage on the stamp surface and gently but firmly stamp onto your cotton tape.
**Tip** If you have ever used regular ink for your stamping, you usually press down with a fair amount of pressure to "ink up" the stamp to get a nice dark image. With the screen printing paint, DO NOT do this! It will just end up being a big mess! With this technique, start with a clean dry stamp, and carefully dab it onto the paint-soaked-foam. Dab it a few times to get a nice coating on the stamp surface. Then when you actually do stamp, don't push too hard, it will only spread the paint all over. Push down just hard enough to deposit the paint, maybe wiggle and rock it a little and voila!
Step 4. Repeat with other letters till your label looks awesome. Cut with pinking shears and carefully place label on another plain sheet of paper to dry in a safe place.
Step 5. Once they are all dry, carefully pick up the paper that they were drying on and bring them to the ironing board. Careful not to walk to quickly so they don't all fly off the paper! Not that it happened to me or anything.. heh.
Step 6. Using a low heat setting, iron the back of the labels for 30 seconds each being careful not to scorch them. This heat will set the pigment so it does not wash out during laundering. If you like, cover your ironing board with muslin or a light colored plain fabric to protect your ironing board.
Allow the labels to cool then flip them back over and admire your hard work! They are ready to be sewn on to your item. If you don't want to sew you could use fusible web ribbon and iron it on to your item.
For next time I may experiment with another brand of screen printing paint just to see if I get different results.
Good luck if you give this idea a try!
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