It's that time of year again. School is almost out for the summer and A is growing out of practically every shirt he owns. We needed to think fast (and thrifty) so off to the store to get $1 shirts (we found ours at the Dollar Tree) and then back to the craft lab to create some one of a kind tees.I knew I wanted these to be graphic and simple (design wise at and to make). First we started with a simple little octopus illustration for the navy blue T-shirt. This little guy is hinting at us all kinds of exciting summer water adventures in store for us. I'm really craving the ocean as of late and we're hoping this guy can lead the way.
For our second heather grey tee, we simplified things even more and went with a large house graphic of sorts. You could take this in a million different directions if you were making your own (add a chimney, front door, windows, etc.) but we decided to keep things super simple, and we love it.
And for our final black T-shirt we went freestyle and created a connect-the-dots geometric design with white fabric paint. (Sorry the photo is blurry but I liked how this pic showed his shirt, and personality, the best). This is a fun one to do with your Littles. You could paint on the large circles and then have them connect them with lines. My boys loved this and pronounced it to be a "kite" when it was complete.
If you are interested in making some of these shirts yourself, I've included our little octopus friend in stencil form to make things easy for you. You can download the pdf of him here:
As for the others, I'm thinking they are pretty straight forward. For the house, you can create your own freezer paper stencil house however you like best. And for our geometric "kite"...well the doors wide open for what you could do on your own with this.
Enjoy and happy last few weeks of school!
Speaking of which, are you are already making big summer travel plans? What about summer classes for the Littles? Do you go with sports? arts and crafts? music? or all of the above? How does one decide? I'd LOVE to hear your tips as I'm trying to figure this out now for my little guys and I'm all in a tizzy!
This is so cute! I am making my nephew this shirt! Thank you :)
ReplyDeleteLove the designs and LOVE the idea of making our tees. Maybe you can answer a question for me since you've made these several times. What kind of fabric paint do you use? What I DON'T want is images that start cracking after 4 times in the wash. I don't mind a distressed look, but inches long cracks repeated across the image just look crappy. Suggestions?
ReplyDeleteyou could applique the shapes on using fusion fabric and stitch a simple detail around the edge. Would take just as long and would avoid the paint cracking or just do a thick outline rather than fill it in with block colour which when it tends to crack.
DeleteHope that helps
Helen :)
Helen, thanks so much for your insight! Tiff, I've been meaning to respond. I know that when you have a higher quality t-shirt that helps (which is not the case here but I've noticed that the better the shirt, the less cracking). I currently use the fabric paints found at JoAnn's but I'm looking into finding an upgrade and if it works well I'll do a post about it. Thanks for asking!
Deletexo
Mer
cute octopus :D
ReplyDeleteThese are too rad. I've never tried fabric paint before but looks super cool. Another idea to avoid cracking could be to cut the shapes out of white transfer paper and iron them on. We did some transfers about a year ago and theyre still holding up pretty well. Or you could use iron on denim patches. Just thinking out loud now. Very inspired. Off to the art store today I think.
ReplyDeleteThanks