FULFILLING A CHILDHOOD DREAM

As a child, we are told not to get anything on our clothes that will stain. There was an emphasis on not drawing or coloring on clothes with pens, markers, paint, and any other art tool that will leave a mark. We had to be clean, neat, and proper. I heeded to the command and rarely ever got dirty and certainly never had art stains on my clothes.

That is not to say that I was never tempted to. As a child, and let's be honest as adults, when you are warned not to do something, it becomes a desire to do it just to see why you cannot. It is like forbidden fruit that dangles in front of us, tempting us. I remember being tempted to color on my shirt and the white walls of my bedroom...to create and mark something unique and totally my own.

Finally, I can say I have lived out one of my childhood desires and painted on a shirt....and it was awesome!

Before I continue on, I hope you do not mind another segment on shirts. While I am creative, I usually do not have crafts every week to write about and before I start tapping into past crafts, I figure I should write about any current ones I have whenever the chance arises. That, and I absolutely love my new shirt and I want to show it off on this blog too.

So to fast forward from being a tempted child to a couple of weeks ago. This inspiration came from Laura and Teresa, who were making shirts for a Taylor Swift concert. The craft looked fun and simple enough to do and the shirts looked amazing. I wanted to make one too!

I do not know who came up with this process. None of us did. I learned the process from them and they learned it from someone else. Hopefully, one of them will blog about their own shirts or comment on my entry and give you the site or book they learned it from. If not, at least you will have my instructions from a third or fourth party.

In the end, the instructions are probably more interesting than who came up with the process. So here you go:

Step One: Finding a shirt (or whatever item you plan on decorating). It should be a plain color and fabric (ex. no ripples). This is a semi easy part of the process. Mine was only difficult because all such shirts I owned were work shirts and I had to decide one that would become a regular shirt.

Step Two: Choose what you are going to put on it. I found this to be the second difficult part. There are billions of choices to choose from. I knew I wanted a quote, but where to choose from? Favorite book, tv show, movie, saying, song lyric? The options were endless! There were so many I loved! After a while, I choose a quote from William Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream.”

Step Three: Whether from a printed out design or from your own artistic mind, trace the design on Freezer Paper. You heard that right. Freezer paper. Trace on the paper side of it. I suppose you can trace with anything, but I chose a simple pen.

Step Four: Using an Exacto Knife, cut out your design. I found this to be the most difficult (especially if you traced something fancy like a special font) and the most time consuming step. It took me a couple of days to cut everything out. To be fair, I had work, chores, and other things to do, so it was not a solid two days of cutting. It all depends on what you chose. But take your time in cutting. You do not want to mess up and have to do it again (I'm saying this from experience).

Step Five: If you want, you can use a pair of scissors and cut out the words or pattern and place them on the shirt wherever you like. With the long quotes I chose, I had to do this. Afterwords, place the pieces on the shirt (paper side up) and iron on for a few seconds. I cannot recall how long Laura and Teresa did theirs, but I only had mine on there for a few seconds. So I say, iron on a few seconds and if the paper is not stuck on the shirt continue to iron it until it is. You will know when it is stuck on there (and it is supposed to be).

Step Six: Now for the fun part! Place cardboard, a paper grocery store bag, or any barrier in the shirt so the paint will not soak through the shirt and onto the other side. Finally, grab some Acrylic paint and brushes and start painting!

Step Seven: Once done painting, pull the paper off your shirt. It comes off fairly easy. You may need a toothpick or other small stick (I used a sharp nail filer) to pick out any small pieces.

Step Eight: Let it dry. For each side, it took a couple of hours. But I should caution you, I made this shirt during a heat wave and that may or may not have played a part in the drying process, especially considering my little apartment was an oven. So my advice is give it a few hours and play it by ear. And if it needs touch ups, repaint the spots and let it dry again (I did that a couple of times)!

Now you have the instructions. All you need is to get the supplies! Have fun relishing in a childhood desire!