Fabric paints are fun to use and a great way to add some creativity to your clothes or homewares. But don&#;t let them scare you, here&#;s 12 answers to common fabric paint questions, covering off how to use fabric paint and how to set fabric paint.
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There&#;s a variety of fun ways you can use fabric paint. From free hand painting to stencilling and stamping. Fabric paint can be used on a range of fabric surfaces like clothes, fabric shoes, tote bags, cushions, and plenty more DIY fashion and homeware projects.For t shirts or thin fabrics, grab a piece of cardboard and place it in between the fabric to stop any paint from coming through the other side. Then dip into your paints and get creative! Once dry, place a light cloth like a tea towel or baking paper over the top of your design and iron over the top for 3 &#; 5 minutes. The temperature of your iron, will depend on your fabric specifications, but it&#;s best to aim for around 100 degrees Celsius or 212 degrees Fahrenheit to &#;fix your artwork.&#;For more on how to use fabric paint, we have 10 fabric paint techniques that you can try, to get the hang of things. Or if you&#;re looking for more ideas, take a look at these 16 fabric paint projects. For denim or any dark material, we recommend painting the area you&#;re wanting to paint using a white fabric paint colour first. The white will catch the colours and make them &#;pop&#; more on a dark surface. This step is essential if you&#;re planning to paint lighter colours like yellow or orange on a darker surface too. Allow this base layer to touch dry, then apply your fabric paints or draw your design over the top in pencil before painting.Fabric paint is of course designed to stick to fabric and clothes, so it&#;s incredibly difficult to remove this type of paint, even before it&#;s had time to set. The best thing you can do is avoid getting fabric paint anywhere it might cause damage. If you&#;re anything like us, we reckon it&#;s best to paint away from carpets, curtains, couches and wear old clothes before starting your project. You might also like to lightly draw or plan your artwork in pencil before picking up the paints. A graphite pencil is fine for this &#; it&#;ll come out easily in the wash.If you catch the paint before it&#;s dried to the fabric, you can try placing the fabric in warm water and immediately scrubbing with soapy water to remove.Each brand of fabric paint will have different instructions on how to set it. We recommend placing baking paper or a light cloth over your design and then ironing over the top for 3 &#; 5 minutes, according to the fabric specifications to set your design. Once ironed, wash your garment inside out on the first wash, then you&#;re good to go!Depending on your fabric, they can be machine washable. To avoid any upset, make sure you wash your project separately and wash it directly after curing to set your design in place.Taklon brushes work wonderfully with fabric painting. It&#;s good to reach for a synthetic brush over a natural brush as natural bristles can be damaged by the fabric medium inside the paint.If you take good care of your project, fabric paint can last a long time. To get the most out of your fabric paint creations, hand wash your fabric after it&#;s set and any time you need to, by washing with a cold, gentle hand wash and mild detergent.Generally, the two work the same. You may find fabric markers are great for intricate work and can be easier to hold than a paint brush. However, a paint brush with fabric paint is easier for large surface areas than a marker. So, see what works for you and your project.
9. Can I mix fabric paint colours together? What about adding in acrylic?
You can mix fabric paint colours together to create more colour options, like you would with normal paint colours. You won&#;t need every fabric paint colour under the sun, a few primary colours will work wonderfully. You don&#;t need to add acrylic paint to your colours either. Fabric paint has been designed with a fabric medium inside it so the pigments can move with the fabric and sit softly. Acrylic paint will sit right on the top of the fabric and cause the fabric fibres to stiffen. If you want to avoid stiffness, don&#;t mix your fabrics and acrylics together.
10. How long does fabric paint take to dry?
This depends on the thickness and how many layers of fabric paint has been used, but generally it can take 30 minutes to dry. You can also speed dry the paint by using a hair dryer.
11. Does fabric paint leave a rough surface?
Fabric paint leaves a slight texture, like acrylic paint does on canvas. Unlike fabric dye which dissolves into fabric to colour it, fabric paint sticks to the top of the surface so it will have a slight texture, similar to a screen printed t shirt.
12. How do I thin fabric paint?
If you&#;re finding your paints are a little too thick, you can thin fabric paints with water to get it fluid and to flow to the consistency you&#;d like. Fabric paints are generally opaque but of course this opacity level will depend on the colour used.
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Ready to get creative? Check out our range of fabric paints here or get stuck into this abstract face t shirt project with fabric markers.
I was surprised to find out that the container of rinse water from acrylic painting, that gets poured down the sink, actually contains microplastics. I looked into it to find out how much of a problem it is and what steps acrylic painters can take to reduce their impact on the environment.
Acrylic paint as we know it today has only been around for about 60 years. Unlike oil paint which has been used by artists since about , acrylic paint is a more recent invention. At the beginning of the s, a solvent-based acrylic emulsion was starting to be used for industrial applications. In the s, painters in Mexico took it up for painting outdoor murals because it dried fast and was flexible and durable enough to last outdoors. By the late s mineral spirit acrylics were being produced for artists for painting on canvas and were being tried out by well-known artists in the US and Europe. In the mid s the first water-based acrylic paint was developed. It was fairly fluid, with the drippy body of house paint. The first heavy body, water-based, acrylic paint for artists wasn&#;t developed until the s. The Pop Art movement embraced this and brought acrylic paint into popularity. Modern, artist-quality acrylic paints are lightfast, flexible (so there is no need to adhere to the fat-over-lean principle you have with oil paint to prevent cracking), will stick to almost any surface, can be diluted to resemble watercolour or use thickly to resemble oil paint, have the widest selection of mediums to modify the paint, are very user friendly for beginners and well-respected for professional artists, and they are extremely versatile.
Because acrylic paint dries fast, brushes are often left in a container of water until they can be washed and brushes are dipped in the water container often during the painting process and rinsed there to change colours. So at the end of an acrylic painting session the artist not only washes their brushes in the sink but pours a container of paint-filled water down the drain as well. For many years I have been answering artists&#; questions about how to responsibly dispose of acrylic paint waste water and how to responsibly wash brushes. The focus had been on preventing the more toxic pigments from going down the drain. But now, as we are becoming more aware of the problems that microplastics in the water supply pose to the environment, more artists are starting to be concerned about the acrylic polymer part of the paint &#; the plastic &#; entering the water supply. I&#;ve done some research and spoken with a chemist that makes acrylic paint.
Acrylic paint is composed of molecules that remain individual until the water evaporates, when they then clump together (polymerise) to form a paint film, dried either on your palette or on the painting. If we wash off our acrylic under the tap then we heavily dilute and separate those small globules of acrylic so that they will not come back together to form larger macro components. In this way they remain a microplastic with the potential to pass through various water screening/filtering processes, depending on the individual water treatment plant practices or capabilities. What gets through can then be released into water systems, such as rivers or returned to reservoirs where it can enter the food chain. These microscopic particles are microplastics, though they are not as dangerous to aquatic life as the larger microbead size particles which fish mistake for food, eat and then die from internal blockages and lack of nutrition.
The pollution of seas and waterways with microplastics is considered a major threat to sea life and potentially also to humans consuming fish or other sea creatures. Microplastics are also in our tap water. Microplastics are less than 5 mm in size and can be divided into two categories. Primary Microplastics are intentionally made as small plastic particles. This includes the microbeads in rinse-off cosmetics and toothpaste, and the plastic pellets called nurdles, that will be melted down to make plastic objects, and are often spilled from trucks and railway cars. Secondary Microplastics are plastic particles that result from the wear and tear of larger plastic articles such as packaging materials, rubber tyres (they contain more synthetic rubber than natural rubber), synthetic fibres in the washing machine, microwave food containers, water bottles, plastic bags, and paint flaking off of surfaces, etc. When you see articles about paint being a problem for microplastics in the sea, they are always referring to the paint sandblasted off the metal surfaces of ocean going ships and containers, it&#;s not about artist paint.
For the last five years there have been regulations in place about Primary Microplastics. But so far the only proposed regulation about Secondary Microplastics involves eventually requiring labelling that educates the consumer on better disposal. So if regulations are created, then acrylic paint tubes will probably say something like &#;Don&#;t put down the drain.&#;
In the scheme of all the plastic in the world, paint is a very small portion. Then, of that small portion, the amount of microplastic that comes from all types of paint (house paint, car paint, etc.) is extremely small as most ends up on walls and cars, as it was intended to. When you then consider that artist colour is an extremely small part of the coatings market compared with decorators and paint used in a whole range of industries, it&#;s clear that artists play a tiny, nearly invisible part, and furthermore, most artist paint goes on a canvas or board so doesn&#;t go down the drain. The environmental impact from the amount of plastic involved in painting with acrylic is very small compared to the amount of plastic in your shampoo, washing up, and milk bottles, for instance. You release a lot more microplastics into the environment from your washing machine if you wear clothes made with synthetic fabrics, than you do from occasional acrylic painting water. (Even if you wear synthetic clothes you can help by not buying new garments as often because most microplastics in the wash come off in the first few washings, so don&#;t change it out for a new garment as often. Or switch to cotton or wool.)
You could make a bigger difference by focussing on those things that are making a bigger negative impact. And most importantly, the impact made by individual people is very small, almost all pollution is made on an industrial scale. The plastic pollution created by all acrylic painters put together is less than that of one industrial fishing company leaving nets in the ocean, for instance. So, even though many artists take steps to reduce the amount of plastic that they release into the water, it is largely negligible and makes little difference to the big picture. So any such steps are really about the conscience of the artist and to feel that we are playing our part. This is very important however, and helps play a part in the wider societal psyche and mentality towards our waste &#; especially concerning plastics. It could be a considered, mindful part of your practice to add some steps into your painting routine that reduce any small negative impact on the environment.
Acrylic painting is a very tiny contributor to the microplastics problem. If you wish to make a real impact it would be more effective to encourage industry to make changes, as they are the major contributors. As an artist, I am grateful that artist paint contributes very little to the problem, and that my painting practice is probably the smallest part of my own environmental impact.
If you would like to do something about your paint water, you can easily filter the solids out of the water with a simple procedure and dispose of them with your solid waste.
The best solution is to turn your paint and your rinse water into solids and dispose of them in the bin instead of down the drain. A landfill typically has very little runoff into the water supply, and the waste slowly disperses over time. Companies who manage landfills have a specialised draining system in place that collects this runoff, and the dump is typically built upon a clay reservoir. It would be drastically less severe to place solid dried paints into an area already housing waste, that would take a very long time to be released slowly in a controlled environment, than allowing it into our water system.
Collecting all your paint water in a big bucket and letting it evaporate takes a long time, but if you have spare space in a garage or shed you can let all the water evaporate and wipe out the solids to put in with your rubbish. This can be sped up by adding an agent to the bucket that will absorb some of the water like kitty litter or sawdust. The faster way is to filter your water and then the clear water goes down the drain and the filter full of plastic goes in the bin.
More than 20 years ago Golden Artists Paints came up with a method for artists to use in their studios that is a modified version of what water reclamation plants use. I gathered the items and tried out the method to see how easy it is to incorporate the process into a studio workflow. It turned out to be much simpler than I thought. You can save up your rinse water in a bucket and filter it all either once a day, once a week, or once a month, depending on how often you paint. I wanted to try out the amounts and timing, add some explanation of the process, and see if I could simplify it.
This is an easy method to completely separate all solids from your paint water. It&#;s three steps: 1) stir in two powders, wait for the dirty water to flocculate and the solids to start to settle to the bottom, 2) test the pH of the water with a strip of litmus paper, 3) pour through a coffee filter.
You&#;ll need to put together a kit of coffee filters, two powders, litmus strips, and some containers. You&#;ll only have to do this one time. Then have a box to store it in and a place to easily reach it once a week or month or however often you need to empty your large wastewater bucket. (Don&#;t use the whisk, colander and spoon for anything else.) Put powders in closed containers (by scooping not pouring, you don&#;t want a powder to create a cloud of dust). Label them and keep safe from children and pets.
Like any painter, you will have systems set up for brush washing, paint saving, varnishing, wet painting storage, and perhaps canvas stretching. Adding another system shouldn&#;t be too complicated. You can work it into your painting clean up time this way:
Keep a large covered bucket for your dirty water at the end of the day. Add to it every day. (The cover is for odour, the fungicides present in acrylic paint don&#;t work well when highly diluted with tap water and can result in smelly water.) Then either filter that each time you reach a litre, or have a larger filtering session less frequently.
1. Add the two powders.
When you&#;ve accumulated at least one litre of dirty water, pour it into a one litre jug or bucket. To one litre of dirty acrylic paint water add a slightly rounded teaspoon of Aluminium Sulphate that you have first stirred into a tablespoon of water until it is dissolved, and whisk for one minute. Then add 3/4 teaspoon of Hydrated Lime and whisk for one minute. Solids should begin forming right away. Let the water settle for 15-20 minutes.
2. Test that the water is neutral.
Meanwhile, take a dry, unused pH strip and dip half in the water for one second. If the water is neutral there will be no colour change, just the colour change of the strip looking wet. If it does go green, orange or black then check its colour against the colour card that comes with the strips. If it shows it is too acidic add a little lime, if it is too alkaline add a little aluminium.
3. Filter the water.
Put the colander over a bucket and line with 2 coffee filters. Pour your water through. Because most of the water is clear it goes through quickly and the last bit with the solids will fit without overflowing.
After 20 minutes or so, when it has drained, place the full coffee filter on a scrap of cardboard or similar to dry out. When it&#;s dried, add it to your regular rubbish. Pour the clear water down the drain or as many people do, use it to water your plants.
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Both of these chemicals are garden products, soil improvers. You might already have them in your garden shed. Aluminium Sulphate, also called alum, is used to make soil acidic for acid loving plants, often used to turn hydrangea flowers from pink to blue. It is also used as a mordant to fix dyes in fabric. Most contain 17% alumina. It comes in the format of either kibbled (granular) or small crystals and so needs to be dissolved in a very small amount of water first. In water purification, aluminium sulphate causes the solids to flocculate or coagulate but leaves the water too acidic and the Hydrated Lime is added to do more flocculation and it also makes the water neutral so that it is safe to dispose of. Hydrated Lime is a kind of chalk, Calcium Hydroxide, used to &#;sweeten&#; soil, that is, to make it less acidic, more alkaline. It is also an ingredient in lime mortar for brickwork. Garden Lime, Calcium Carbonate, can be substituted as it may be more readily available at garden centres, but you should almost double the amount in the recipe, to about the same amount as the alum because it isn&#;t as watersoluble as the hydrated lime. The pH testing will tell you if you have the right amount. If the packaging is too large or not available you can order the hydrated lime online in smaller amounts as Calcium Hydroxide. The 25kg bags that garden lime often comes in are much more than you will use in the studio, as you are using just a teaspoon per litre. But, you could share it out with other acrylic painters. You can divide it up into yoghurt pots or small plastic bags. Again, scoop gently, don&#;t pour, to raise as little dust as possible and wear a good mask while doing this.
The alum is acidic and the lime is caustic. Treat them with respect and don&#;t get them on your skin until they&#;ve neutralised each other. Think of them like bleach or concentrated ammonia. And don&#;t breath the fine, caustic powder. Gloves and masks are recommended.
I bought both of the alum and lime powders in 500g packages. 500g of aluminium sulphate is 55 slightly rounded teaspoons each weighing around 9g. 500g of calcium hydroxide gives 125 of the 3/4 teaspoons weighing around 4g, so you&#;ll need to buy twice as much aluminium sulphate by weight as the calcium hydroxide. 1 kg of aluminium sulphate and 500g of calcium hydroxide will treat 110 litres of acrylic rinse water. It takes about 5 to 6 of my rinse jars to make a litre so it depends on how much you paint how long it will take you to create a litre of very mucky water.
Soil pH testing is a normal activity for many gardeners. A pH test measures the acidity or alkalinity of soil or water: pH7 is considered neutral, above is alkaline and below is acid. A test kit is a small, inexpensive pack of 100 paper test strips that need to be kept dry. You cannot reuse a strip.
I tried many combinations of different amounts of flocculant, stirring them in for different lengths of time, and waiting different times for the paint to clump up. I tested if you could get away with pouring it through a single filter or if you need a stack of two. I tested water that was a little dirty and water that was thick and sludgy. I also filtered rinse water without adding any flocculant. I incorporated the results into the instructions I&#;ve detailed above.
It&#;s not the amount of water that determines how much of the two chemicals to add, but the concentration of paint in the water. If your water is concentrated from evaporation so that your litre of dirty water was formerly two litres, or it&#;s just extra mucky, you may need more of the two flocculants. I tried a couple of things for extra mucky water, and you can do one of two things. Double the quantities of both of the flocculants or do as usual but if the water is very cloudy afterwards, do the whole process a second time with the water. Or consider the nearly clean water to be a great improvement and good enough.
On the other hand if your water is only lightly dirty because you included your second rinse jar of nearly clean water or you use a 2 compartment container that must all be poured in, then treat it for the amount of solids it will produce and halve the amount of the chemicals. It&#;s not about the amount of water, but the concentration of paint in the water.
The amount of dissolved plastic and pigment is negligible in the second rinse water and later when soaping well-rinsed brushes, so it makes sense to not worry about that water and instead to concentrate only on the sludgy dirty water container.
One filter isn&#;t quite enough &#; the water that passed through is slightly cloudy and tinted. But when you use two the water is very clear. Because the second filter remains pretty clean it could possibly be reused as the top filter the next time, to save waste.
I treated plain tap water and there was a thick amount of cloudy particles in the water. This is the two chemicals, swollen in the water like flour thickens gravy. If you think your water isn&#;t too sludgy but a lot of stuff filters out, that is the alum and lime which swell up in the water.
Untreated rinse water that I put through a double filter took 20 hours to go all the way through and the filtered water was very dirty with sediment at the bottom. I filtered that water a second time through another double filter and that took 12 hours and the water was still very dirty and had sediment. The plastic and pigment particles are too fine to be captured by the filter unless they are flocculated. You will find when you pour your flocculated water into the filter, that there is no layer of fine, settled residue left in the bottom of the container, because all of the very fine particles are now clumped together.
I found that the pH of the acrylic rinse water before any treatment was pH8 which means it is slightly alkaline (possibly because some acrylic paint has a small amount of ammonia in it) with the same pH as seawater. After aluminium sulphate was added, it became pH5, slightly acidic like black coffee. (Tap water is neutral at pH7.)
Which may make it less of a chore!
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