August 12, 2010

Princess Dress Rainbow Rescue

My little princess wore a white ballgown to Disneyland the other day and came home looking like she'd been in a food fight.  Chocolate, spaghetti, and other snacks were all over it even after laundering!

The wonderfully creative Lindsey at Filth Wizardry recently posted pics of a hand-painted skirt her daughters made.  She used permanent markers and watered down acrylic paint to make a gorgeous wearable piece of art.  So, I thought we'd try and follow the directions in this post to rescue what was once a pretty white satin princess dress.

To start, I cut off the tulle overskirt, and some frayed fabric at the bodice.  Then I let her have at it with the permanent markers.   It was a little slippery working with the satin and since this dress was already sewn up Holly needed a little help to keep the fabric still while she painted it.





In the end, I had to finish for her by hanging the dress up on a plastic hanger and filling in any spots she missed, but she managed to do most of it herself.  This weekend she is going to a "Rainbow Disco Dance Party", so we painted a rainbow across the top.  Of course she couldn't wait to try it on and I'm sure she will be the only one at the party with a dress like this!
... a side note for those of you who are afraid of letting little ones loose with permanent markers, I recently discovered that a squirt of hand sanitizer gets Sharpie marks off skin with hardly any scrubbing!

13 comments:

  1. Love this..it's beautiful and know it was lots of fun for her.

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  2. Awww, that's so lovely! I love the rainbow! She looks so happy in it too. I'm glad you guys had fun with this :)

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  3. You are just tooooo brilliant. I love that you did what you said you wanted to do. The blog and site are inspiring and so are you! A toast to onward

    spg

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  4. Beautiful!!! I had no idea how beautiful this could be. Will watch for old dresses at goodwill from now on. I showed my daughter and she loved it, too. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. Thanks. Now I want to find some cheap white pillows. Wouldn't that be pretty?

    @Melanie - If you want to try it, just make sure the paint is VERY watery or the fabric will be stiff when it dries. Also, this is definitely an extremely messy craft, so we did it outside. That way it wasn't a big deal with spills.

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  6. This is super-fabulous! I loved Lindsey's project, but this is even better for people who don't sew! I would love to link to this for today's post at http://dollarstorecrafts.com - so please say yes! :) heather at dollarstorecrafts.com

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  7. @Heather - Thanks! I appreciate the mention and I love your blog! I especially love it that I made it into the $1 and under category. Nothing is better than creating something gorgeous for (nearly) FREE.

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  8. Was recommended this on another blog. AMAZING.

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  9. It is beautiful! I am going to feature it on my blog tomorrow!!

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  10. did you just paint the watered down acrylic paints onto the dress with a paintbrush?

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  11. @Lorie - Thanks!

    @deborah - First my daughter drew flowers and butterflies with sharpie pens, starting with a black outline and then coloring them in. Then, she painted the watered down acrylics on with a paint brush. Because you are painting on fabric the colors bleed together. The sharpie also bleeds a bit, but not nearly as much.

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  12. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!

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