It's that time of the year

Ok, so I'm not going to complain about the hideous wet weather we have had most of this week because yesterday when the Olympic torch came to town, the sun shone in and out of the clouds so everyone, in true community spirit came along the route that was run and a real sense of excitement was in the air. 

Alice has art after school on Tuesdays at the other end of town, so she and her gorgeous art Teacher together with a couple of other kids put their paint brushes down to go and see the torch enter Bexhill-on-Sea. They came right up and personal with the chap holding the torch who then offered to let all the kids hold it!!! How cool is that, my girly was best pleased about being part of this Olympic history. 

We, on the other side of town saw Eddie Izzard carry the torch past the de la Warr Pavillion which was a real treat. I like that Eddie Izzard is from Bexhill-on-Sea and a keen Patron of our local arts. Here is Andy's great photo of him with the Italian Job movie exhibition bus leaning off the roof.

Pretty nifty I thought! I never thought I'd ever come close to an Olympic torch in my life time.For those of you living in the UK, have you managed to catch site of it passing near where you live?

So, as my title suggests, it is that time of the year when Alice gets to say good bye and thank you to her special Teachers and we always try to give something handmade and a little personal. I bit like we did at Christmas time(here)last year for her two Teachers.

We decided that we wanted to make something simple, colourful and hopefully effective. So, we designed and hand printed some tea towels last night. Here's how we did it.... 

1. Buy some 100% cotton tea towels or use some old vintage cotton fabric and sew into a tea towel if you fancy. I bought these for £2 each as I am not sure if Alice's teachers are into vintage design, so I played safe with these new ones.

2. Bought some fabric medium from our local art shop, to mix with acrylic paint to make it work like fabric paint. 

3. Bought a sheet of foam rubber to cut out our designs for printing.

4. Gathered our very small collection of 3 acrylic paints we have at home.

We then cut out some flowers from the foam rubber

This photo was taken after we had used them, hence the grubbiness

We then applied paint to the different shapes and printed away...

We liked that the prints didn't come out perfect, a little bit more with our own artistic design, a little wonky really just how we like it.

And finally, ta dah...

and the final blue flower on the left hand side of the above tea towel.

I am planning to add a few more colours to our acrylic paint collection and making some more vintage fabric tea towels for future presents. I do hope Alice's teachers enjoy these and that they bring some extra colour to their lives.

Thanks for popping in,

wishing you a fab rest of the week and

see you all soon

xox