Why are you doing this now? you ask. Well, let me tell you.
The Kinder teachers always paint shirts for the kids for their program and this year is only a little different. The music teacher wanted a minimal design and we were perplexed as to how to do it that wouldn't be too time consuming. I mentioned this technique that I've seen and wanted to try, so I made some examples and we were very excited about the way they turned out.
Here's how I did it:
1. Take your shirt. Any color. The music teacher wanted blue and red, so another teacher dyed the shirts. You don't have to dye a shirt, you can just use any colored shirt. Put something on the inside of your shirt. I used a paper bag with waxed paper on it, but just a piece of cardboard or a paper bag would be fine.
2. Get a template. I used a big diecut from our school and cut it through cardboard. There are a lot of freezer paper stencils out there and those would be great, however, I didn't want to iron on 80 pieces of freezer paper and peel them off. My way works well if you are ok with imperfection. If you are doing an intricate design and don't want any drops or mistakes, by all means use the freezer paper technique.
3. Put bleach in a spray bottle (you can find them in the travel section of most stores for less than $1) and some water. Pretty much 3/4 bleach and 1/4 water. I didn't measure it out; I eyeballed it. Spray on your design. I did a fine mist on some and on some others, I almost soaked it. It just depends on what you want your shirt to look like and how bleached you want it to look. I had just removed the stencil and this is what it looked like:
4. This is what it looked like after I had let it set for a few minutes:
5. Wash immediately (that's why I did it on my washing machine, it was easy to do 4 or 5 and then pull them off the paper bag and put them in the water). Dry and wear!The next few pictures are just a different stencil that I did to mix it up a bit.
So that's what I've been doing the last couple of days. I've got the last batch of blue in the dryer right now, so they'll be headed up to school tomorrow.
We all know that when we smell certain things it brings back memories. Well, I have a memory of bleach water that makes me drool. Drool? you say? Yes, drool. When I was 15 going on 16 I worked at a snow cone stand as my first job. We used bleach water to clean everything! I got to wear old shirts, shoes, shorts, everything, since it would just get bleached. My shoes were always a variety of colors from the different snow cones. So when I smelled the bleach water I started craving a snow cone. Now, just to get to my mom's house so I can go get one! My sister tortured me today! She walked up there and got one!
Have a great day!
No comments:
Post a Comment