Skip to main content

A Fall Batik Banner


The kiddos and I just finished making the most fun fall project: a glue batik banner. I've never done anything like this with fabric before and we had a lot of fun. I got the idea in the October issue of Family Fun.
1. First, I took a piece of muslin fabric that I just happened to have in my fabric bag. (Don't even ask me why someone who doesn't sew has a bag full of fabric). Then I tore it into the size that we wanted.
2. Next, we arranged some leaves on the fabric and outlined them with school glue (I used Elmer's).
3. Then we let the glue dry for 24 hours. Well, we got busy on the weekend and let it dry for a few days:)
4. Then we took some acrylic paints in fall colors and painted our leaves.
5. And we mixed a fun color for the background. After that we let the paint completely dry (it took a few hours).
6. When the paint was dry, I ran a kitchen sink full of warm water. After letting the it soak in the water about 20 minutes, I began rubbing the glue out of the fabric. It came out very quickly and easily.
7. After letting it dry one last time, I used some Heat 'n Bond to make a place to slip in a dowel rod.
Here's the finished product, hanging on our backdoor! I love the way it turned out and the way that the glue made those patterns. Its such a cool tie-dyed sort of look. I can't wait to try this again!
Well, today I'm off to War Eagle, Arkansas...a little spot out in the middle of NW Arkansas that is beautiful this time of the year and has the BEST arts and crafts fair around. I used to go every year until we moved to Alabama, but now that we're back I've been counting the days until this week! I'm sure I'll have some treasures to show you tomorrow:)
Labels:

Comments

Kayren said…
I cannot even begin to tell you how JEALOUS I am that you are going to War Eagle. I've been three times, and used to make the trip back when I was close enough and could get off work. (You just gave me a fantastic idea for my Show and Tell.)

The batik is cool. The girls did something kind of like this in a homeschool co-op on wet silk with paints where they ran on purpose for the tie-dye effect. Then you run it under the water to rinse out the paint that is remaining. They made cool scarves/belts. The same could have been done with their project with wax pencil, but I really don't remember how you'd get that out, and it sure wouldn't be nearly as simple as getting out the glue with your project.
October 15, 2009 at 9:30 AM
Betsy Brock said…
Wow! That looks great! The possibilities would be endless...I bet you do another one for a different season!
October 15, 2009 at 9:29 PM
Lora @ my blessed life said…
Kayren~
War Eagle was great!!:) Sorry to rub it in. lol I was worried about the rain, but it turned out to be a lovely, cloudy, cool Fall day. I don't like it when I'm hot at War Eagle shopping for Christmas gifts-ha! I was so excited to be going this year b/c I hadn't been able to go since we moved to AL in '06 and I was used to going every year:)
October 15, 2009 at 9:42 PM
Michelle M. said…
I LOVE this! I was just thinking today that we need some autumn decorations around here. I am definitely going to do this! Thanks.
October 16, 2009 at 11:03 PM
Lora @ my blessed life said…
Michelle~
If you try it, I hope you'll post on it. I'd love to see what you make!
October 17, 2009 at 8:56 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Reading Game: A Review

I was excited to receive this review product recently, thinking my 1st-grade-son could really benefit and enjoy it a lot. And I was right! He is having so much fun with this game. The Reading Game is a fast-paced memory card game using words. The game comes with 6 sets of memory cards with 6 corresponding readers. The idea is for you and your student to play memory with each set of cards (playing 6 rounds with each set), after every 2 rounds your student then reads 2 test sentences to see how he is retaining the new words he is learning. After the whole set has been played, he is then ready to read the corresponding reader...and has learned 30 new words! By the time your student has played every set of cards and read every reader, he will have learned 180 words. Of the 25 most common English words, 23 are on that list; of the 50 most common words, 42 are on that list. So this little game of reading really does prepare your student well. The readers are illustrated with cute ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...
23 comments
Read more

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while.  It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it.  However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it.  Plus it's a little bulky.   When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it!  It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make.   I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course.  They  have these little wooden door hangers for .79.  I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each.  I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing.   I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had).  Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will ...
17 comments
Read more