Since most of my work deals with fabric, I wanted to use fabric in my business holiday cards, and I wanted to design it myself. Snowflakes turned out to be the perfect motif for trying out one of the brilliant techniques in Amy Karol’s Bend the Rules with Fabric: discharge dyeing with a bleach pen. It took a while to find the metal tips she recommends for getting fine lines, but I finally discovered a pack of bottles with similar fine metal tips in with the glass- and porcelain-painting supplies at Michaels (I saved the label for reference, but it’s likely hidden under a pile of junk; I’ll update with details when I find it).
I drew the snowflakes on the fabric freehand, without a plan, just sketching with the bleach pen. Some of my flakes turned out better than others, but the bleach bleeding into the fibers gave the lines an almost glowing effect that I think looks quite cool. The color revealed by the bleach was a little different for each base fabric I tried.
I had previously accidentally spritzed some diluted bleach on this chunk of fabric, which added some background interest behind the flakes.
I’m itching to try some printing techniques to make more snowflake fabric (or wrapping paper!), but Christmas draws near and time grows short.
Next up, I’ll show you how I put removable charm squares of the fabric into my Christmas cards as tiny holiday presents.
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