Potato Stamp Pillow

You're in for a treat today. I'm about to show you how to make the cheapest, easiest stamp ever. The best part is that you might have already done this years ago.

Do you remember in grade school when you made stamps out of potatoes? If you did, you did more than I did in grade school. Everyone I've shown this project to has mentioned something about Barney, grade school, or activities you did at the age of five. That's okay though, because that means I'm just making up for some lost time, I suppose.

This project really came about because I was trying to grow my own potatoes out of old potatoes that had sprouted in my pantry. That failed so pretty badly, so I had a few small, inedible potatoes to throw away. As fate would have it - just kidding, it was my own laziness because I put off cleaning for Pinterest - I saw this awesome triangle pattern and thought it would look great as a pillow. Rather than going out and buying fabric, I thought it'd be fun to make my own with those old potatoes.

I cut the potatoes in half, then cut a triangle shape into them. I actually had three potatoes to work with, so that gave me a lot of room to mess up, which I did -- a lot. If I could do this project over again, I'd probably have drawn out and measured a triangle to use as a pattern on the potato first. Oh well, you live and you learn. So I ended up with two triangles I liked, and I just picked one.

Making the stamp was honestly the hardest part, and that should tell you something about how easy this project was. After that, I just used some yellow acrylic paint to start the stamping process on my plain muslin fabric (you'll be hearing a lot about that fabric since I have so much of it, by the way) which I cut into the square that would be my pillow. 

Oh, and if I can give you any piece of advice about painting, it would be not to spend money on those artist palettes or mixing trays they sell. They're a total rip off. Just save your old egg cartons. The compartments are perfect for keeping paint colors separate and deeper than the ones most of the mixing tray offer.

After you've chosen your color and poured it, just start stamping. I chose yellow and gray because that's the color palette I'm using for my living room. I was going for a sort of gradient effect with the yellow, so I dipped the stamp in paint, and stamped three triangles. The first one is the most pigmented with paint and the third is the least. Then I put a gray triangle in to end the pattern, and then I start all over again until I fill up the square of the pillow.

Again, there are a few things I would do differently if I could do it over. One of them would be to stamp the triangles more closely together, but that's okay. Another would be to make the surface of my triangle a lot more smooth and level so that those thick lines wouldn't show up on the fabric. I'm still pretty happy with how it came out.

After waiting for the paint to dry, you have to set the paint. To do that with acrylic paint, you can just put a towel over the fabric when the paint is dry, then just run an iron over it for a little bit. If you're using fabric paint, just follow the instructions on the packaging. Then if you're making a pillow like me, you have to sew the two squares of fabric together and leave a little room so you can put the stuffing in, insert the stuffing, then sew the pillow shut.

Here's my finished product. Next to my other finished product. Please excuse my wrinkly couch. As you know, I haven't made zippers for the cushions yet, so that's why they look like that. 

Anyway, I think I'm going to do another pillow with a circle pattern soon. I'll let you know how it goes.