Novelty Prints

Right around the beginning of springtime I start falling head over heels for novelty prints – the zanier the better. I think it’s my body’s way of dealing with the frigid temperatures and perpetual darkness. I’ve gotten pretty stir-crazy recently from pretending to work on my thesis and starting up school again, so I can’t help but dream of when I have the time to execute some of my schemes. I’m planning on printing and painting my own material sometime soon, but until then, I just browse the internet, looking at all the pretty prints that stores are stocking.

{Modcloth’s Bing Your Praises dress, Flamingo For It dress, Yes You Candy dress, and Regatta Love It dress.}

Once it gets warmer, I plan on breaking out some of my novelty print pieces (I’ve got a couple fruit and map patterned crop tops hiding away until the sun comes out permanently). Until then, I can dream about bright patterns and colors – and plan some DIYs. I want to do at least two novelty print projects:

1. Print my own design onto a (probably) pre-made, thrifted dress (see A Beautiful Mess’s project for inspiration). I’m thinking I might do multicolored fruit stamps of pears and apples or lemons and limes.
2. Create a feminine, vintage-inspired dress using novelty prints (like the blue Russian nesting dolls dress from Eva Franco for Modcloth, above). Beth Louche’s StashModernFabric Etsy shop has a lot of cute novelty cotton prints, which I would love to make something out of, including the kukla collection if I wanted to recreate the Eva Franco dress, this bicycle print, and this “Asbury Park” ice cream print.

What about you, have you fallen hard for novelty prints?

– Ginny