Carpe Diem fabric painted jumper

I spotted this cute jumper in Banana Republic a few weeks ago, but only thought about recreating my own version when I rediscovered an old Gap jumper I had at the back of the wardrobe, which hadn't been worn for a while, and it made sense to spruce it up and give it a new lease of life taking inspiration from the Banana Republic one.

I bought some Dylon fabric paint pots in black and white, thinking I could use the white for a design on a navy Gap jumper I have in the same style, and so went with the black for the orange jumper.

I also bought some "iron-on" wax paper (similar to greaseproof paper but waxed on one side) to use as my template.

Using the Banana Republic logo as a guide, I drew my own version of the text straight onto the non-waxed side of the paper:

I then cut out the letters (making sure I left a little paper link to the insides of the D, a, p etc). This would have been much less fiddly with a sharp pen knife!

Next, I ironed the wax paper (wax side down) onto the jumper:

Using a foam stencil brush (found on ebay) I dabbed several layers of the fabric paint onto the jumper, and following the paint's instructions I ironed over the paint between each layer:

And with a little suspense and teasing of the paper off the jumper when the last layer of paint was thoroughly dry, this was the final result:

Woohoo!

Stenciled Cushion Cover

Unfortunately I can't take credit for this idea - I saw it on Pinterest and luckily had all the necessary tools and spare plain cushion cover ready to use!

These stencils are amazing. My sisters - Elly and Fizzy - and I had a whole multicoloured set that we used all the time when we were little, which included animals, numbers, modes of transport, shapes - you name it, we could stencil it!

I practised on a piece of scrap wrapping paper the same size as the cushion cover to work out how the quote I wanted to use would fit. Then I used a Sharpie permanent fabric marker to stencil the words onto the cover...

...and coloured in the letters.

And this was the result! I had to google "lilies" several times, as both my Dad and Jim pointed out that it was spelt wrong. It's not, it is L.I.L.I.E.S.

"When you have only two pennies left in the world buy a loaf of bread with one and a bunch of lilies with the other." Chinese proverb.