BISHOP STREET BANNER WORKSHOP PART 1

A big Thank you to everyone who came to the banner workshop last night and to our wonderful workshop leaders Steve, Chris and Miriam. It was a fascinating evening jam-packed with great ideas and inspiration.

Thanks also to Dave my husband for taking these photos during the evening.

WORKSHOP 1

 

This workshop led by Miriam taught the technique I learnt from the wonderful Anne Thalmessinger who uses it in many of her own banners.  When I wanted some special banners for our wedding last year Anne showed  me this techniqueand helped me make some like the ‘love’ one in the photo which hung above the place we said our vows.

 

The banner on the right is one of Anne’s which shows how she often combines the spray technique with painted elements.

This technique is a quick and effective way to cover large areas of fabric in an eye catching way. It can be used to create backgrounds, borders or whole banners. It can also be used on paper and to decorate things like t-shirts or bunting.

 

 

If you want to create stencil lettering or other drawn elements you first cut them out of paper and use double sided tape to fix them to your fabric. This ensures they don’t get ‘blown away’ with the force of the spray paint.

Our table of treasures, flat things make the best stencils, especially natural objects like leaves and grasses. Lace, paper dollies and bits of rubbish such as bottle caps all work well. Lighter objects such as feathers will need a spot of double sided to stick them down.

We used boxes to place our fabric and objects in to help prevent spraying the walls and carpet!! Our fabric came from our local scrap store. Its important to spray directly down to avoid moving the objects. Don’t spray too close put leave above a 15 cm gap between the spray and the fabric. Build up your colours gradually in layers. You may like to move some objects in between colours. We used enamel craft spray from wilkos but any spray paint e.g. car spray paint will do. Why not do a call out at church for any unwanted cans?

As each workshop was only 20 minutes long including the demonstration the above pieces were made in just over 10 minutes each! If you want a quick and very effective banner making technique why not give it a go!