How to Alter Fabric

Oh the joys of being an insomniac, its 4.30 and I cannot sleep so I thought I would put together a set of shots on how to do the altered fabric. Sorry my camera threw a "wobbly" and blurred a few but I am sure you will see how its working.

This is an idea of what you will find useful to work with. Acrylic paints, brushes (stencil type), embossing powders, Angelina fibres, other fibre and wool, beads, glossy accents, a glue stick, kitchen paper, glitter, cooking parchment paper (the sort you line cake tins with) and your piece of fabric. This can be any size depending on what you want to make with the finished piece from a tiny ATC size to a larger book cover. I suggest cutting it a little larger so you can trim it later.

In a palette (old lid) place a selection of paints, I am doing greens :-( sorry to state the obvious!! and copper for the glitz element.
With a dabbing action randomly add the first colour, was and dry off your brush before adding the next colours each time

Last to go on was the copper but thats not important

Now take your first colour of embossing powder and put it in spots around the canvas, shake off the excess and put the next colour on, repeat till you have the colours on, now sprinkle all over with the last to fill in any gaps and then shake the excess off again.

Now heat the whole piece to melt the powder, it will take a while as the cloth is wet from the paint to keep going till its all melted

Taking a glue stick dab into areas where the colour isn't quite right or too much of one and add more powder and heat it again, repeat this till you are pleased with your background

Now you can add more texture with the Angelina fibres. Pull off small amounts and randomly lay over the piece I use 2 colours here, lay a piece of baking parchment over the top. If you don't you will end up wearing it as it will blow away !! lol

Now heat it through the paper until it melts into the fabric lift the paper to check its all done. At this stage without the paper I heated it a little more which had the effect of making it move around a bit creating "hills and holes"

Sorry this is where the camera goes a bit silly :-( Think you can just about see what I mean though

Final stage is to add wool type fibres and threads and the beads with glossy accents as the glue wherever you wish and because this piece reminded me a bit of the seabed I put on a few tiny shells to finish the whole thing

Hope you like it and have a go. Yes it is a bit messy but its fun and thats what crafting is all about, enjoy yourself