A t-shirt crafty

Abby & I decided to do a craft together today. I got the idea from a craft website called cre.ations.net. We both had a few t-shirts that we weren't afraid to ruin, so we plunged in.


I didn't want to hand cut any letters so I used my cricut cutter. At first I cut the design out on wax paper and tried to iron the design onto the t-shirt, but the wax paper I used wouldn't stick. Must have been doing something wrong, so back to the drawing board. Next I cut the design out using thick, white card stock. I thought this would be thick enough to spray the bleach solution on, but it wasn't as you will soon see.
First I inserted cardboard into the t-shirt. In this case, it was a flattened out Kashi cereal box (my favorite cereal). I layed out the design on the t-shirt. I used a little bit of glue stick to get the paper to adhere to the t-shirt fabric.

I carried the project out into the garage and sprayed it down with the bleach solution.
It was a mix of 50% water and 50% bleach. I put it in this handy-dandy Fabreze container, which I so carefully relabeled. bahahahaha

Abby and I waited for the magic to begin. However, I quickly found out that I had used too much spray and soaked the white cardstock. This caused the design to be almost totally washed out.
This is the end product after rinsing thoroughly and drying. You can faintly see "power" but that is about it. So back to the drawing board.
My next thought was that I need something that would stick better to the t-shirt. I found some 3 inch wide painters tape.
I ran it through the Cricut and it worked pretty well, with the exception of one little tear. I wasn't phased at all by that since I figured it would add to the imperfect look of the tee.

Again, I sandwiched cardboard inside the tee, carefully pealed off letters & flourishes and placed them on the tee. I sprayed the bleach solution LIGHTLY. Waited a few minutes, sprayed lightly again. We were beginning to see color change and I was nervous about leaving the solution on too long. Abby & I debated about if it was time to rinse out the shirt or not. I couldn't wait. I got anxious, grabbed the shirt and plunged it in a sink full of cold water.

After drying the shirt, I was so pleased! This time it turned out just right!

All the details showed up and I love that this old tee has a new life, along with reinforcing my 2011 New Years Theme of "Power". Hurray.


Next it was Abby's turn. Abby benefited from my previous mistakes. She used very thick cardboard to cut out her dinosaur shape that she hand drew. She also cut out her letters using the Cricut from the painters tape, since that proved to be the right medium for this project.
She used the bleach solution very lightly and watched carefully for signs of color change. Once she was happy with the look, we thoroughly rinsed the shirt and dried it.

I love her design and the results. So very "Abby".
Another bonus...this project was absolutely FREE. No costs involved since we just used old tee's and supplies we had on hand. Can't beat that!!

FYI - Abby told me that "rawr" means "I love you" in dinosaur language.
RAWR, back, Miss Abby!