Country Living Peach Street Style: Eight is Enough

Did you enjoy my Thumbprint pillows tutorial?

I wanted to add one more design to go along with these two, but I didn't want to do the thumbprint again. Instead I chose to draw and paint a design onto my pillow cover. Let me just say this. I AM IN NO WAY AN ARTIST. I couldn't draw a straight line if my life depended on it. But I knew that I would be able to do this because I have a little cheat method that I use. If I can do this, so can you! No special skills required. Stay with me and I will show you how easy it is to transfer an image onto material to paint.

First, choose your fabric and lay it on a flat surface.

Choose an image that you would like to transfer. I chose an octopus to go along with my seahorse and starfish. Print it out or make a copy of it. I enlarged my image and pieced it together to fit my pillow cover. Place your image onto your fabric and tape the top of the image onto the fabric.

This is my cheat method. Good old CARBON PAPER! Place the carbon paper under your image, being careful not to move your image.

Grab a ball point pen and carefully trace your image using gentle pressure.

Your image should look like this. If you get a little oops like I did don't worry it will wash out.

Your now ready to paint your image.

Here is my image after I was done painting it. The camera makes it look like it is splotchy, it's not though. Although I liked it how it was, I thought that my octopus needed a little personality.

So I gave him a face. Ah, much better!

I knew that the carbon paper wouldn't show up on my dark paint, so I used this to transfer my face image. I've had this stuff for YEARS! I used the white sheet and did the same as I did using the carbon paper.

I didn't have a small stiff paint brush to paint his face or his little suckers, (yes, that's what they're called), so I used a round toothpick. I just dipped the toothpick in the paint and used it like a paint brush. It's all about improvising and being creative!