#subzerofest

Do you live in the Bay Area and love art? Love technology? Love people running around fully painted and doing performance art in the streets? Heck, love to buy weird stuff directly from the people who make it? Downtown San Jose is shutting down the streets from San Carlos to William and letting art run wild at the SubZero Festival. Coinciding with the First Friday art walk, SubZero is a huge street fair of vendors, live music, art installations and hands-on art activity. This year it's not only Friday, but Saturday too! 

Admission is free, but with a $10 donation you'll get a wristband that gets you 10% off at the art vendor stands. There are a few tiers of tickets you can get for VIP stuff, but you can see all the good stuff for free. It's family friendly, but very crowded and stimulating.  If your little ones get freaked out by too much stuff going on, come earlier rather than later. And past 10pm, the party atmosphere gets turned up to 11.

I'll be there with my giant fruits and veggies, and some new kawaii-kowai creepy unicorn stuff.

Here’s a quick and easy how-to: make a summery strawberry dress or shirt with very minimal ingredients. Click through the gallery above for step-by-step photos. I got this pinky-red shirt dress from Le Target for just $20. 

cotton shirt or dress

fabric paint (or just acrylic if ya just don’t care)

stamp rubber or lino block (or cardboard)

box cutter

paintbrush

I chose to do my strawberry seeds very large, because I’m using this dress as part of my booth at the SubZero Art Festival on Friday. I need to look big and bold! But ti’s up to you if you want to go big or dainty— or both!  For ease of use, I recommend always glueing  your stamp to a wooden block. That serves as a handle and a level pressure. Box-cutters are something most people have in their tool box, but exacto knives or stamp-carving tools will give you better detail if you’ve got them.  Stiff, thick cardboard is an alternative to rubber.

Stamping too primitive? Try your hand at stenciling— it gets great results. Try out this great freezer paper stencil tutorial over at DanaMadeIt.

Stamping is a no-frills way to print on fabric, but if you’re not using fabric paints and the proper tools, results may vary (more than you’d like).  My stamps weren’t very thickly applied, so I went back and painted more yellow into the outlines. If you were to use proper paint with a brayer (roller) this would be quicker and more uniform. You could also use a potato.

Don’t worry about perfection— it’s better to get your idea out of your mind, onto paper and into reality than to worry over it. You don’t have to have a premium-supply stocked craft room to do fun things. If you’re using regular artist acrylics, the results will be stiffer than with fabric acrylic— but who’s judging a giant strawberry? It can be washed in a normal cycle, but don’t put it in the dryer.