DIY Painted Washcloths

You can't go further than two feet into the baby section of the internet without hearing how amazingly must-have the aden & anais swaddle blankets are.  I'm not one to argue - breathable, soft, stretchy fabric sounds lovely.  I'll probably register for some, but in the meantime, I wondered whether there were any DIY substitutes in the fabric world.

The internet said that Joann's cotton gauze fabric was pretty close, so I bought some with a coupon to try it out.  I started small (a ~9 inch square) since I didn't want to waste fabric if the painting wasn't working.

First I tried a rubber stamp method.  A quick brush of fabric paint on my stamp, pressed over and over onto the fabric.

(My picture quality is a little whack still - getting used to crafting in my garage now that we moved everything out of the now nursery room..)

Anyway, the stamp isn't too bad.  Not very crisp, but it has that homemade flair? Even the stamp is homemade! Haha. It's a green rupee from Zelda.

For painting attempt #2, I tried a paper cut stencil with a paint "pouncer".  Basically a foam brush you dab up and down to fill in the stencil. (Make sure you tape down the stencil so it doesn't wiggle around.)

Again, not too bad.  This one is the water bending symbol from Avatar.  It's quick, but don't expect screenprint quality in term of even paint and crisp designs.

Once the designs are dry, iron them from the backside of the fabric to set the paint (so it doesn't run when washed).  It'd be kinda lame if your washcloth was constantly running paint everywhere. :P

I added another plain piece of gauze on top and put right sides together, sewed it up and turned it right side out.  Iron it flat and add a top stitch to finish it off.

For the final test, I washed both clothes in the next towel laundry load, to see if they colors would bleed. No bleeding, and now they are nice and soft and ready to go for baby baths. Or something. Haha.

Now time to tackle a full sized swaddle blanket.  Maybe I'll just paint the border though? A 45" square of fabric is...quite a bit of painting...:P

Gender Reveal

Although we had planned to find out baby potsticker's gender, I was surprised how much of an impact the news actually had on me.  Being able to use a pronoun other than "it" really makes the whole thing seem a lot more real.  There's a human in there, not some alien lifeform! Or so we continue to hope. Haha.

Anyway, if you look up gender reveal ideas on the internet, there's only a million billion things that one could do.  I had to try a couple, cause how often does one get to do such things?  :P 

First, for Sak's overseas family, I made some reveal cards. What's your guess?

The sticker is peel-able!  Here's what they look like Daiso.

Did you guess? Here's the peeled card!

Haha! You had a 50/50 chance more or less. :)

I didn't really have a preference either way, but I was very excited just to know! Now we can begin seriously thinking of names. So difficult :P

Anyway, for my family I also made some gender cupcakes! (Mostly because I wanted to eat cake at the time =_=)

They were having a 40% all bakeware sale at Michaels, so I loaded up on food coloring and a tool claiming to make two toned cupcakes.

I made a batch of vanilla bean cake mix from trader joes, and dyed a section of it blue with food coloring gel.

I used bags to "pipe" the mixture into the foil cupcake liners.

Not too bad?

But after baking the whole thing mixed together. Fail!!

Well. whatever.  Maybe my cake batter was too runny or something?  Luckily I used foil wrappers.  Topping the cupcake with a good layer of buttercream icing should hide the blue (more of a green now?). 

And now, the fun part! Food coloring spray paint!  I don't bake often, so this was something completely new to me.

Yummy and pretty!

Anyway, as surreal as it sounds, we'll be having a son.  I wonder if he will be nerdy like us.  If he'll be into sports and the outdoors like his grandfathers and uncles.  If he'll love bargain hunting and photography like his paw paw.  If he'll like puzzles and be good at finances like his baachan.  Or if he'll be very theatrical like his aunt! 

Though most probably he'll be completely his own person, and introduce us all to new things. That should be exciting!