Back in April, Karin of better than jam taught us how to screen print over a stain to bring a shirt back to life.

I am not a screen printer, but I am a spiller, and so when my favorite traveling dress developed an unsightly stain, I was eager to try a less technically savvy version of Karin's cool trick.

I have an India ink stamp pad and a collection of cool stamps that I use to personalize the reusable bags I package my jewelry in. You can find a similar one here. It's important not to use a regular run of the mill stamp pad, because the ink will not set and your clothing will be even more ruined than it already was.

Here's the offending stain pre-stamping: (It's not so visible in the picture, but believe me it was noticeable.)

Step 1: Test your stamp on a section of the fabric that is not visible when you wear the garment.

Step 2: Tape around the edges to protect the fabric you don't want to stamp. Slip a magazine inside the garment to give you a smooth stamping surface and to prevent the ink from bleeding through to the back of the fabric.

Step 3: Start stamping! I chose a stamp larger than my target stamping area because I wanted the image of the leaf to be abstract. I alternated the leaf position by rotating the stamp with each use. I tried to keep the images evenly spaced, but I just eyeballed it.

Step 4: Heat set: I blasted the stamped area with a hairdryer for a few minutes.

And that's it!

-MaryAnne LoVerme
wabisabibrooklyn.etsy.com
wabisabibrooklyn.com