One of the techniques taught in the Creative Chemistry 101 class with ‘Professor’ Holtz was a dabber resist – taking advantage of the fact that acrylic paint is waterproof when dry. Here’s a canvas I put together over the bank holiday weekend making use of the technique, and how I did it follow after.

I used Snow Cap Paint Dabber from Ranger to apply the white acrylic to a decorative rubber stamp and printed it onto white Egyptian cotton muslin. I remembered to clean off the stamp before the paint dried onto it! I dried off the paint, and then liberally coated it with Mustard Seed Distress Stain and I think a little Rusty Hinge Distress Stain before spritzing with water and drying it off. Any excess ink can be wiped off the dried acrylic paint with a damp baby wipe. I adhered this to a manila tag with matte multi medium and cut away the excess once dry.

For the tailor’s dummy, I used the TH Sewing Room set to die cut out a white card dummy, which I overprinted the swirly flower design with the Snow Cap Dabber. After drying, I added Antique Linen Distress Stain to the body and Walnut Stain Distress Stain to the wooden parts. Once that was dry, I then used various brown distress inks to add the shading and make it appear 3D before adding the Dusty Concord Distress Ink to the bodice area before drying it all off again. A quick wipe over with a damp baby wipe brought up the white paint again.

The flowers are cut from cotton fabric using the TH Tattered Floral die and then loads of Dusty Concord Distress Stain – dropping water into the centre of the flower pushing more of the dye to the edges. A few dabs of Picket Fence DS also helped lighten the centres, as well as dabbing through a punched stamen shape. Finally I added a layer of Snow Cap dabber through the same punched stamen shape, dried it all off again and sewed on the white pearl seed beads for a bit of texture. All of it is mounted on a 7x5in canvas.