The Toucan Dress

One of George's sort of teasey nicknames for me is Toucan. We have no idea whatsoever how it started; it's just one of those weird things buried in the rubble of stupid-conversations-past, but it's there. I recently made myself a toucan skirt out of this amazing fabric but I love hand-painting and I really am a dressy sort of girl and so I had to make myself a dress.

I hand-painted the toucans using acrylic paint. The tip is to use a really good quality acrylic; these pictures were taken after it has been washed twice so you can see how well the colour sticks. Another thing to remember when painting on fabric is let it dry completely at first; it will go kind of hard and crunchy and you'll want to scream "OH NO IT'S ALL GONE WRONG!" but then the magic happens! If you then iron it on a nice hot setting with another piece of fabric on top (so you're not directly touching the paint) you design will go all lovely and soft and smooth and seem to melt into the fibres of the fabric. It is one of the most satisfying things in the entire world. 

 The thing that really makes this dress is the buttons. I bought them on etsy and just fell in love with them the minute they arrived. The only slight change I made was a adding a little bit of permanent marker to the tip of his bill to match his painted friends. 

Aren't toucan dresses the best?!