 I seem to be filming a lot of these videos vlog style lately What do y'all think of that? Are you good with it? Do you not want to see my face? Do you want to just see the table? Let me know inquiring minds want to know Anyway, we're here for another digital background collab with shell see Peg Robinson and Bea grob and This month the theme is summer. And so we all created some backgrounds and with that in mind myself included I will put some still images here somewhere of my backgrounds and My backgrounds are a free download for you all. There'll be a Dropbox link in the description below. So check it out Also down there, of course, is my happy mail link my link tree list of links for social media Places you can support the free content here on YouTube and over on Facebook All that stuff so check it out. Anyway That being said I decided to do something a little different this month with my digital backgrounds from myself and everybody else Let me show you what I did Okay I'll explain what these are in a minute. So to do this project you're gonna need Some Reynolds freezer paper. There's some glare. There we go Reynolds kitchen freezer paper plastic coated so it Is shiny and waxing on one side and plain paper on the other side and I've had this one roll for a really long time Because one if you're just using it for craft purposes one roll is gonna last you forever And I recommend Reynolds because it works better than other brands You're gonna need some fabric White fabric it could be white muslin. You'll see this is a white on white print. There you go dots But you want something that's white or off-white you could use regular muslin Then you're gonna iron the fabric to the shiny side You're gonna iron the fabric To the shiny side of the freezer paper it will stick It'll stick well enough for what we want to do. Anyway, I've done this before a really long time ago and I thought I would revive the idea for this project I'm really trying hard with these digital backgrounds to bring you less of actually creating the background and More of something unique with what you can do with all those digital backgrounds that you've bought from all the artists You admire on YouTube or that you're following on Instagram or whatever. So this is one of them So you want to iron your piece of fabric to the shiny side of your freezer paper now the fabric I buy? I either get about a quarter of a yard or I get The best thing to get is go to your quilting department of your fabric store and get what they call a fat quarter a Fat quarter is a square of fabric It's a half of a half of a yard and it's a good piece of fabric for this They usually cost around a dollar or two max and a lot of different colors I buy them for lots of different kinds of mixed media type sewing projects, but for this they really work really well You can get plain colors, but you also can just get some white on white prints like this Which is this dotted one is really cool And I have big dots I have this one can you see what that is there we go That was a fat quarter and then I have these little small dots Once you get your Fabric iron to your freezer paper, then you want to cut it into eight and a half by eleven inch sheets Then you get something like this Then you want to iron it again. So what I recommend that you do is turn it over Iron it again Turn it this way iron it again. So it's stuck really well. You'll notice on that one. I was just showing you this one It's not stuck very well That's because I only ironed it once enough to get it to stick enough to the paper to cut it out So you really want to iron it a few times and get it really well stuck You may want to if you get really frustrated and or depending on your printer take a piece of masking or packing tape and Put a little bit of it on one top edge. I'll show you and I'll show you why This is just masking tape Regular thing masking tape So put it a little bit like a quarter of an inch or an eighth of an inch away from the edge Push it down really well and then wrap it around the back side Pulling it nice and tight making sure there's no wrinkles Give it a trim And then it doesn't hurt so you just rub it again and hit it with a bone folder Rub it and make sure it's really on there really well And then this tape end is the one you want to feed through the printer first The one that you want the printer heads to grab first and now I have an HP printer And when I feed it into the paper into the printer it pulls it up and then prints it this way I wanted to print on the fabric. That's the whole point of doing this So I want to make sure when I put it in the paper tray I put it with the freezer paper side up So and with the tape edge facing in so it grabs that edge first and pulls it around and then prints Having the tape up there helps eliminate a lot of jams Because as it's going through the printer the paper can get stuck and jammed up and you'll see on this one That happened and I have one. I Finally gave up trying to print on it because it kept jamming Like that so I'm going to Print these last two. I'm actually going to tape this other one And how long did I keep the iron on there about 30 seconds every time? I had the iron to the paper or the fabric. I have one of those Easy press machines I'll put a picture right about here somewhere It's a big basically a big square flat iron and it has a temperature thing on it and a timer so You don't have to have that you can do this with a regular iron And just you know count one one thousand two one thousand Don't have it on there too long trim The other thing I will say is don't expect that you're going to be able to do a whole stack of these and put These in your paper tray. You really need to do one at a time Yeah, so let's go to the printer. Hang on just a second. Okay here. This is my printer. It's an HP Envy 5660 It's getting a little old and past it but anyways, so this is freezer paper side up and my masking taped edge in And I'm going to slide that into the paper tray and then we're going to print on it So hang on just a second So you open up the document on your computer just like you would any other digital document and tell it to print to your printer Only this time instead of having paper in the print in the paper tray. You have that piece of fabric It's a little loud. Sorry, and then it prints that image on your fabric So I'm going to print one more and use up this last piece of paper And then I'm going to show you quickly what our next step is Coat one we're going to let that dry I'm going to put on coat two and then I'll take it back upstairs and I'll see you there Once you have two or three coats of the matte Finish spray on there. You can pull them off of the freezer paper This can be used as palette paper. So you can set that aside to reuse and Then the fabric can be used in any mixed media applications that you would normally use fabric Now the thing is though, I've printed these with an inkjet printer So they're not going to be washable despite the fact that I've sealed them With the matte finish spray, I really wouldn't get these wet So they're good for any mixed media Sewing applications, but something that's not going to get wet that being said you could make a pencil bag out of it You could make A journal cover out of it There's a lot of things you can do we're going to do a little mixed media quilt And I'm going to peel all of my fabrics off here I'm going to do it With just an inexpensive little genome new home sewing machine. It's One of the little inexpensive ones I use for mixed media applications. You don't want to use your nice dressmaking sewing machine for this because or for any mixed media project really because Paper pulp will clog up the motor in the machine and The matte finish spray and those kind of things aren't great for your machine either If you if you only have one machine and you're going to use what you have I applaud that But I would say that you want to be more diligent than normal for keeping it clean and well oiled Because it could get clogged up So there we go, we've got all our papers peeled I can put these over by my easel and use them later for palette paper I'm going to change out the presser foot on my little genome machine because it's got the wrong kind of presser foot on it And I'm going to set it up and I'll be right back Okay, so we have kind of a weird camera angle here because I want to try to get Some of the actual sewing in the shot along with the cutting and piecing and then we'll do an overhead shot of when I'm done For the most part i'm going to speed forward through the process. I am Just going to be doing random piecing. I'm probably not going to do a lot of More traditional sewing where you have the we're going to show you here Where you have the right sides together You stitch the seam and then you fold it open and then you press it We're probably not going to do that on this particular piece I don't think i'm going to mind if the raw edges stick out. So i'm going to just Randomly piece pieces together to create what I want. I do have a particular image Sort of in mind. I don't know if it's going to work out or not, but I guess we'll find out And I did change out the presser foot on the machine to the traditional foot I did have a For those of you who know anything about sewing. I had a free motion Oops, where are we there? We have free motion foot on the machine Which is great for like doing embroidery things but for the process we're going to do this is the wrong kind of foot So I changed that out and I put some white thread in because at least to start I want just white thread I may change that out and do some accents with black, but I have white. I also as you can see have scraps of traditional fabric. I have this bin This is my scrap bin and it has everything from fabric To for whatever reason there's some denim patches in here some Left over pieces of zipper tape, which we might actually use today Little pieces of the lot. There's all kinds of stuff ribbons Yeah, so that's just sort of the when I need a color Or texture of something to add to the piece. I'll be pulling from the scrap bin I also may pull some of this produce whoops where there we are produce netting From like onions or like this one is from tangerines um, and I have some of my tea bag Where are we tea bag quotes? Um on the table, so I may be pulling some of those So we'll see where I go with this. I am going to um get to sewing I'm going to turn on pandora in the background. You guys won't hear that but that's what's going to be playing in the background and uh Let's see what happens. All right. I'll be back Okay, this is our finished piece. I actually really like her a lot more than I thought I was going to Like a lot of things that I do about halfway through I go. Oh, that looks like a hot mess But I really like her and I made sure to put a few tabs on the back at the end um, so that I could hang her from something and I actually thought I had a little like mini um, sort of a curtain rod in here somewhere And I can't find it, but then I had this old knitting needle and I'm thinking Hanging her on the wall from a knitting needle might be cool. Anyway Um, I was going to also I was going to back it with some just regular fabric. I thought you know, I still have some of this um Summer backgrounds printed on this fabric. Let's just use that on the back and I love it. I absolutely love it I did put the freeform Foot briefly back on the sewing machine with some black thread to just bring out a few things Like her eyes and the shape of her face and some of the curls in her hair I used a couple of the t-bag quotes as sort of earrings, which is really cute and this is one of the one of the onion bags Um, I love her. I want to show you guys um, something couple other things that you can do printing your artwork And backgrounds and things on fabric now, of course, you could have taken this you could have made a pencil bag Um, you could have used it as a journal cover You can probably glue it down on things But you don't want to get it wet with a glue that say has a high water content Not if you've printed it on an inkjet printer, even though you've sealed it So you probably want to use something more pasty like a yes paste That being said don't use any more than you absolutely have to because And I would do a few experiments to make sure it's not going to run. Um, I definitely wouldn't get it wet Now years ago I started playing with fabric in my printer By doing a couple of sort of memorial pieces and this one's not going to fit on camera, but I'll show you what I can um, this is actually a pillow cover um, that's seen better days But we still have it and I don't get rid of it even though it's looked Like this and been worn out like this for at least 10 years These are my father-in-law's neckties And he passed away quite a few years ago And these are pictures of him one with his granddaughter Ashley and He's in both of them and I made this pillow out of the neckties and printed these photos on Paper the same way I did the backgrounds and put them on this pillow And this pillow was used and loved and it was on my daughter's bed And it was her sort of her stuffy and you know, it had her opa on it for a long time And I never have repaired it or anything at some point. I probably will I actually might add some of my husband's next tie neckties to the pillow to be honest and frank Um, and that might be interesting, but I am not going to get rid of it. It sort of has precious memories And then this one This is not going to fit on camera It's just not so this is a quilt and I had surgery on both my feet years ago And I knew I was going to be laid up for a while and anybody who's had surgery on their feet knows I had one foot done at a time so I wouldn't be wheelchair bound that being said you still can't do a lot and um So I prepped the panels for this quilt before surgery and then when I was laid up I did the handwork on them and it is a family tree quilt Hold on Okay, it's a family tree quilt and the pictures on the quilt Are printed just the same way we did the backgrounds. This is my husband and his older brother This is my grandfather and his brother Each one's different each one has sort of little memory things attached to it Family pieces old buttons. This is another picture of my grandfather when he was a little boy This is my parents on their wedding day Hold on My inlaw. Um, sorry my dad's parents on their wedding day Stuff is going to fall off the table. I know it is. Um my in-laws Oops oops Um The this one hold on. Okay. This one is um my grandparents and that fat little baby. That's my dad This is me and my two sisters You get the idea This is My husband's grandparents This is my grandmother and my mom Um another set of grandparents of my husband's The they're both German. He's he's a hundred percent German Um, and this is a picture of my in-laws and their two sons my husband and his older brother. Um Yeah, so this was a remembrance quilt it hung on the wall at home at the old house for years And when we repainted we took it down and it just never went up and there's just Not really a great place here to hang it up. So it's been folded up in a closet But that being said it was hung up for a long time. I didn't protect it from sunlight or anything else I prepped the photos the same way we did the backgrounds Exactly the same way. I didn't do anything else special to them And it has lasted so, um, I can't I won't guarantee it's gonna last, you know A hundred years or anything, but it's done pretty well. So give it a shot and play Whether you do something like this and on this too just like on the face I didn't I didn't put the edges under I did pink them, but I didn't Talk them under I didn't you know put anything on them to prevent them from praying or anything. Um And I didn't with this one either so play with it have some fun with it Think of it as another collage element or another Art element in your mixed media work Play and have some fun Download the backgrounds and see what you can do with them. I would love if you share Over in a life of art and self-expression I know peg is going to have some stuff going on over an art joy of sharing I'm going to click I'm going to link all of their videos in the description below So I'd appreciate it if you click over to their channels Watch what they do with the same backgrounds. See what they come up with Go show them some love like share and subscribe to everybody's channel Support the free content here on youtube and over on facebook by checking out everybody's video description Um, I have a link tree in mind and that will give you a list of links places. You can follow me on social media Um, my amazon store my etsy store patreon Uh teespring society six spoon flower like all kind of places you can get my artwork Original pieces or pre pieces printed on fabric or something else Um, and I know they most of them have that too. So check out the video descriptions I certainly would appreciate that the most important thing of course is go out Have a great day and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys