Sew Lah Tea Dough: Getting Crafty for a British-Canadian Wedding ♡

I'm so excited to be sharing this crafty project with you today as it's been in the works for a while now, but as it was a gift and I hadn't given it yet I couldn't spill the beans to anybody!

We had an amazing day on Friday celebrating the wedding of an old friend of mine from back home in England! You might have seen the cakes I blogged about a couple of weeks ago - the Cherry Bakewells in my Taste of Britain series which were for her bridal shower... But then, the big day was here! They had a beautiful wedding in an amazing venue and I was so happy to be a part of it. Having a friend from England not so far away here in Canada is SO nice! Especially fun was seeing her family who had made the trip across the pond who I also hadn't seen in a long long time. It was such a special day, with delicious food and a lot of fun :)

So in thinking about their wedding day and their gift I thought there had to be something handmade there for them both, and what better theme than a little something British and a little something Canadian.

As I mentioned in my last post about the bride-to-be, I'm a big personal fan of British girl marrying Canadian boy ♡ So I thought I would use this in the DIY project for them both!

And so, the flag tea towel idea was born...

1 English flag, 1 Canadian flag and 1 more combining the two countries, just like their marriage would be!

For this project I was super excited to be able to use two different, and relatively new techniques that I've been playing around with in my crafting recently.

In August I treated myself to a pretty wooden box with 3 new X-acto knives in, for a different stencilling project. This, along with Martha Stewart's roll of adhesive sticky-back stencil film and I was ready to roll!

First to make the stencils... I downloaded some simple images of the flags from the internet, and just using Word I made sure they were the same size and printed them out. I cut out the part that eventually would be painted in, firstly on only the paper just to make sure it all would look right before committing to the stencil film!

Trickier was creating the English cross of St. George/ Canada maple leaf combo flag! I wanted them both to be identifiable without losing the flag idea. Isn't it nice that both the English and Canadian flag are red?! I opted for the English flag rather than the British one for that reason, as well as the simpler design - simpler in stencilling I think is more effective and way LESS risky - especially as it wasn't a project for me, but for a wedding gift. It had to be perfect!

I cut out a separate leaf from a different print out and traced it on top of another English flag. This gave me a better visual of how to cut it out. I wanted the leaf to be in the centre, with the cross coming out from it. With these both being red, there had to be a small amount of space between the two parts so it was a very careful cutting out job!

Then, with everything cut out and planned it was time to transfer those templates onto the adhesive stencil film. It's so easy to cut out from, the only downside is the roll. The previous project I did with the roll of film was cut out before using it as a stencil another day and I placed it between lots of heavy text books in between but this time it was an all day project and I had forgotten to do that. Luckily it did flatten out over the couple of hours as I prepared everything before using the paint. But next time I'll definitely make the stencils a day or two ahead of painting day just to make sure they're really flat and smooth. But the adhesive does make it so easy to stick down and doesn't really allow for any bleeding which is just great!!

Stencils all cut out so it was show time! Time for the real deal now.

I placed a sheet of bristol board on the floor and taped it down so it wouldn't move. Then I taped the tea towel down and measured to see where the centre would be. I chose to put the design in the bottom centre of the tea towel, so that if it was folded and was hanging, for example on the oven door the image would still be visible.

I used Tulip soft fabric paint which I have tried once before in black and loved the feel of it, and how easy it was to apply. This time in crimson, poured out in a takeout container with my foam brush at the ready!

Easiest one first of course...

2 down, 1 to go...

Maybe leaving the hardest one to the end wasn't the best idea... I was nervous!

The biggest mistake I made in cutting these out was definitely not leaving enough room at the edge (seam allowance but without the sewing!) to allow for my brush to get close to the edge without going over. I had to be TOO careful and could have avoided that pressure!

But luckily all went okay and then there were three!

I left them to dry for a few days (72 hours is the instruction on the paint tube!) and then washed them in warm water on a gentle cycle. And then I dried them on a rack not in the tumble dryer. Reading reviews about this paint it seems like it holds up pretty well. Hope so anyway! Do you have any experience with these Tulip soft fabric paints?!

So, all dry and ready to be packaged up... not without the obligatory photo shoot first!