DIY: Quote T-Shirt

Once again, I lack a decent reason for the absence of new blog posts!

My newest obsession is cheese making. If you know me, you know how deeply my love for cheese runs. So when I stumbled upon an 'easy' mozzarella recipe in a cool hippie cookbook I thought, 'hey, why not? How hard could it be?'

Famous last words. Thus far, I have successfully ruined an entire gallon of milk in two separate attempts to make cheese.

But cheese is not the topic of this blog post! If I ever have success with cheese making, then I will dedicate an entire blog post (or two) to my surprising amazing ability to craft cheese from milk.

Until then, I'll just write about a dye project I did.

FINAL PRODUCT:

What you need:

• a white t-shirt (mine was 1.50 from Goodwill. Score!)
• RIT liquid dye (mine was something my mother bought ten years ago, never used, and shoved into the far corners of the closet) 
• Elmer's blue gel glue  (1.40 from Hobby Lobby with coupon!)
• Some salt
• A bucket

And that's it! It's a pretty straight forward project. It didn't turn out as great as I had hoped-- the colors were more faded than I had expected. Still, the overall idea worked.

Step One:

Lay out your white shirt and draw a design with the glue.

The thicker you draw, the longer it takes to dry. My shirt took around a day for the glue to fully dry.

Step Two:

Once your shirt is completely  dry, get your dye bath ready. I filled up a large bucket with a hose and dumped in 1/2 cup of salt.

Next time I try this technique I'm going to use warm water and see if it improves the result.

Step Three:

I used a small baby hanger to hold onto my shirt as I dunked it into the dye bath. For the dye bath it's easy-- just pour as much dye as you want into the water and stir. Mine was a bit dark, so I just put more water into the bucket. Ignore the stapler in the above photo-- it was an idea that did not turn out well ;)

I was trying to achieve a gradient look-- where the bottom is darker than the top of the shirt. I was surprised how quickly the shirt took the dye, and how much the dye bled. If you want to do a gradient I would advise not even dying the top of the shirt-- most likely the dye from the rest of the shirt will bled anyway. I eyeballed how long each section should be submerged.

Step Four:

 Keep in mind, the color you see is a couple shades darker than the final, dry color.

So this was the best my shirt looked the entire project. You can see the gradient, and the words stand out. Let your shirt completely dry-- it can take a long time!

Step Five:

Most of my dye seeped out in this step, but it's a necessary one. Once your shirt is dry, put it in some warm soapy water to get rid of the glue. This will also get rid of all the dye that isn't fully set. Unfortunately, a lot of dye bled from my shirt, getting rid of the nice gradient I had created. This step took the longest-- probably around 30 min of constant washing. I couldn't put it into the washing machine until I was sure that it wasn't going to bleed anymore.

Once you are sure the shirt is done bleeding, stick in the wash.

Step Six:

Et, volia! T'es finis!  That's it! The rest of the glue should have washed from your shirt, leaving you with a cheap, customizable t-shirt!

So this wasn't my favorite technique, but it did turn out decently. I'm excited to try it again, tweaking some steps, and seeing if it turns out any better. If so, I'll post an update :)

Thanks, as always, for reading!

More T-Shirts!

More t-shirt fun!

I wasn't sure if I would have time in college to make another t-shirt, but some friends and I took advantage of the three-day weekend to make some t-shirts.

After an unreasonably long and stressful search for fabric medium, and some black magic printing out the stencils, we were ready to craft.

We had all the major geek subjects covered-- LOTR, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones-- for our t-shirt designs.

Geek love!

I decided to add the quote 'Not all who wander are lost' to the back of my lord of the rings shirt.

I found a foam paintbrush stuck away in some box I had packed.

We watched some Downton Abby-- a wonderful show I was just introduced to-- while we cut out our designs.

Speaking of amazing shows, I saw the season premiere of dr who this weekend! Epicness.

Coming to college I had just briefly heard of this show called Dr. Who-- my roommate at the time was a big fan, but I wasn't really interested. She knew some people who were going to get together and watch an episode-- I tagged along because I didn't have anything better to do and ended up being introduced to the most amazing show ever. I was hooked-- okay mostly drastically confused-- by the first episode, and it just got better from there. Now a year later I am the one trying to convert everyone I know into rabid Dr Who fans.

Anyway! There were no Dr Who shirts to be made this time around. Maybe next time. I'm not too happy with how my old dr who shirt turned out-- there was a lot of bleeding around the letters. The more t-shirts I do, the more I learn so I might make another dr who shirt.

One of my friends accidentally cut out the the design wrong-- cutting out the object rather than its inverse. Her design was complicated and it was difficult to decide which part to cut out. Regardless, she put the cut out object onto the shirt and then used a splattering technique to cover a small area of the shirt with paint. We were all excited to see how this turned out.

Just try and imagine four people-- and four t-shirts-- an ironing board, wet paint, and two x-acto knives in a room that was only meant to house two people and you'll begin to see how cramped it was. We made it work, though. No serious mishaps occurred.

My design! Let me tell you, cutting out those tiny little delicate hobbit letters was a mess. I thought for sure that my crude cuts with the knife would result in a messy quote.

Funny story. So here we were, with a bottle of paint, and a bottle of fabric medium. Then, we realized we needed some way to mix them together. Of course my room was devoid of any small cups or convenient answers. Glancing around my room I spotted an unlikely answer-- the lid to my deodorant. Weird, perhaps. A working solution? Most definitely-- it held enough paint for us to apply to our shirts.

Et, voila, the first t-shirt! I loved how the splatter technique turned out, the white paint really was a nice contrast to the beautiful purple shirt.

Et, voila, the second shirt! Gandalf's staff turned out really well-- especially with the asymmetrical placement.

As for the game of thrones shirt...use your imagination? I don't have a picture of the final project (I'll post it later!) but rest assured it had amazingly crisp lines.

My quote! It's not the best picture (I'll post a better one later) but I wanted to quickly write this post while I actually had free time, a scare event which might not happen again soon. I dipped my pencil in the paint to create the dots over the letters-- which is so much easier than trying to cut them out.

Anyway! My crafting summer has continued onto the school year it would seem! I am instructing my friends in my crafty ways :P

I'll post better final photos later! We, being the wonderful geeks we are, are planning on wearing our shirts on the same day and I'll get photos then. :)

Thanks for reading!

T-Shirt of Gondor

As you may or may not know, I recently went to Abilities Unlimited and picked up some amazingly cheap, blank shirts. One became a batman t-shirt, but the other one just sat in my closet. I couldn't think of a design. I had already created a Zelda shirt, and a Dr. Who shirt.

I was out of ideas. Thankfully, I have creative friends. One of them reminded me of a really cool Lord of the Rings design-- the Tree of Gondor.

Beautiful, yes. Crazy? Also yes.

It was the most complicated design I had attempted to cut out. I was worried that the bungled attempts to make delicate cuts with an x-acto knife would result in an odd, messy t-shirt.

Still, I figured it was worth a try.

So I pulled out the x-acto knife, turned on the Glee Project, and got to cutting.

And cutting.

And then some more cutting.

It was pretty tedious to cut out the small, curling branches of the tree but the hardest thing to cut out was the petite stars. They were just so small and so angular it was near impossible for me to cut them out.

 After I managed to cut out the tree, my next worry (yes I'm a worrier, can ya tell?) was that I wouldn't be able to iron the stencil on flat. The little bits of freezer paper had a tendency to curl up, and I was worried that they would curl up under the iron and not adhere properly.

The stencil! I laid it our on the shirt before ironing down. I never really try and make sure it's even or straight....mostly I've just been able to wing it.

Carefully I began to press the stencil down with the iron. It turned out a lot easier to adhere than I had previously imagined. The little branches smoothed down easily.

I applied a thin coat of the dark acrylic paint over the stencil. I didn't want to put too much paint for fear that it would bleed, but I did want to apply enough to cover the grey shirt.

It took only about thirty minutes for the paint to dry; I used the hair dryer to finish drying it.

Et, volia! It turned out so much better than I had imagined. The stars actually look like stars, and the tree pretty much resembles the tree of Gondor!

My last t-shirt before college starts! Which is crazy soon, come to think of it. I move in in four days. Four. Wow. It's crazy to think that I'm gonna be a sophomore...

Thanks for reading!

Holy T-Shirt Batman!

When I was younger, I watched the old batman shows on TV Land. You remember the really classic, overly cheesy Batman? With the bright, spandex costumes? And Robin, who said epic things like 'Holy hole in a doughnut!' (my personal favorite) or 'Holy kindergarten!'?

Well, I've been a batman fan since those laughable cringe-worthy tv shows. This love was reaffirmed by the amazing Dark Knight trilogy. Considering all of this, I can't believe that I didn't even think to do a batman shirt! It wasn't until a friend suggested it that I realized that I had the perfect set up-- a blank, black shirt, and some yellow fabric paint. 

I opted for the classic symbol, rather than the more angular symbol commonly seen today. My love for batman started with the classic shows, after all.

I had run out of freezer paper, so I headed to the grocery store and bought 75 ft of it, the smallest box I could find. Suffice to say, I can make a lottt more t-shirts.

With the Olympics playing in the background, I pinned my freezer paper over the symbol I had printed out, and carefully began to cut it out.

The inverse! This is the part I cut out of the larger sheet.

I ironed on the stencil, ready to begin.

My paint! The problem with paint that is older than I am, is that after time, it begins to separate into solids and liquids. I do my best to shake the bottle and integrate the paint, but it doesn't always work. I mixed the paint with the fabric medium so that it won't wash off. 

The paint's age really showed for this t-shirt. At first, as I dabbled the paint on the shirt, I was dissapointed. It wasn't as seamless as I had wanted. It certainly wasn't going to look like I pulled it off the rack at a store. There were beads of paint that refused to dissolve, giving the shirt a texture, weathered look.

However, the more I looked at the shirt-- and especially once the paint was finalllyyyy dry-- I realized that I loved the effect of the old paint!

You can't really see it clearly in the picture, but the paint is heavily textured, and has areas of brightness and darkness. It gives the shirt a weathered look.

The shirt itself is ridiculously soft and comfortable. Perhaps because it's been worn in. ;) Two bucks!

Black Shirt-- $2

Foot of Freezer Paper-- $0.10

Amazing, custom, handmade Batman t-shirt?
Priceless.

:)

The One with Zelda

As you may know, I'm kind of in love with the Zelda franchise. I grew up playing the Ocarina of Time, and have played just about every Zelda game in existence. I mean, come on, it's pretty awesome. I mentioned recently how I had stumbled upon an old Zelda shirt design I had sketched out. Given my luck with my dr who shirt, I figured that I should just go for it.Who can say no to a free, custom Zelda shirt?

I had an old grey shirt hidden away in the back of my closet, and some old acrylic paint left. I also had just enough freezer paper left from my last shirt project to use. I love it when I have all these materials just laying around-- it's nice not having to go out and buy materials. Even if the acrylic paint is probably over ten years old and is kind of sketchy. It's free. That's all that matters.

 Freezer paper! I had just enough to cover my design. Which is good as I didn't want to go out and buy like 100 ft of it at the store.

 My design! Well, Nintendo's design. It's called the Hyrule Crest, and is a big symbol of the Zelda games. You can't really see the triforce that is in the center of the design.

All of my materials! I've had that grey shirt for years, and don't wear it anymore. So I decided it needed a facelift. Also, if it all went horribly wrong, I could just throw the shirt away.

I placed the freezer paper over my design and pinned it down. I'm not the most patient person, but I did my best painstakingly cutting out the design with my x-acto knife.

 Pin cushion!

The cut out design.

 And done! After I cut out the design, I carefully picked up the freezer paper and put it on my shirt.

 I used my iron to adhere the freezer paper to the shirt. Funny story-- always make sure that the shiny part of the freezer paper, aka the waxy part, is facing down onto the shirt. You want to adhere the paper to the shirt, not the iron. Which is kind of what I did. I was trying to adhere the little triangle in the middle of the triforce and I didn't check to see what side was facing down. Which meant that as soon as it hit the iron it stuck there. Frantically I scraped it off, not wanting to mess up my parent's iron.

So yeah, if you're making a shirt, definitely check that.

I mixed the paint and the fabric medium and applied a thick coat to my shirt. I hoped that it would not bleed, as it my dr who shirt kind of had. Even if it did bleed, it would simply added to the...rustic flair of a homemade shirt. ;)

Et, volia! The finished product. :D I loved the crisp, clean lines of the design. It definitely turned out better than my Dr. Who shirt did. To help speed the final stages of drying, I pulled out a hair dryer. It helped to dry the paint, and didn't seem to have any adverse side effect. 

I love it. Cheap, easy, and a nod to my favorite video game!

Don't Blink

By now everyone knows a couple things about me. Mainly speaking, my love for Dr. Who, and my aversion to spending money.

Well today, those two facts combine, with interesting results.

You see, last semester my friend (and future roomie!:) bought this awesome Dr. Who shirt. It had a picture of the TARDIS and the words 'Keep Calm and Don't Blink' inscribed on it.

As awesome as it was, I didn't want to shell out the twenty dollars it costs online to have my very own. Stumbling around craft sites, as I am wont to do in my spare time, I found a couple tutorials on how to make your own t-shirt design.

So I decided to make my own Dr. Who shirt! The design was easy to find online. Cool historical side note, the Keep Calm and Carry Own was a British Propaganda poster during WWII. It wasn't really popular at the time, feel into obscurity, but was recently re-found and suddenly became popular. Cool Dr. Who side note, the 'Don't Blink' is in reference to one of the most dangerous creatures on the show-- Weeping Angels. Not only are they cool, they also use Quantum Mechanics, which means they are super cool.

Back to the t-shirt!

Here is the design! I first tried to create a stencil using regular parchment paper (because that was what I had in the kitchen) but after attempting it on a old t-shirt...

 I decided that I would go with the recommended freezer paper. You see, with the parchment paper, I just tried to tape it down on the t-shirt. Freezer paper has a thin layer of wax on the bottom. With a little heat, this wax adheres to your t-shirt, creating a bond that prevents the paint from spreading.

So after a quick trip to church to grab some freezer paper (they didn't need it! ...and if they did, they still have 149 ft. of it ;) I set about cutting out the entire design.

After outlining the words, I used an x-acto (? you know those words that you say all the time but have never actually spelled?? totally having a moment here...exacto? x-acto?) knife. I decided not to try and do the TARDIS this time. I left room on my shirt in case I suddenly became ambitious. It would have been really hard to cut out all those small pieces so I left it off for the time being.

Once everything was cut out, I put the stencil on my shirt and used an iron to temporarily adhere it to my shirt. 

Then I put in all the little dots, like in the P and D, ect. Some of these didn't work-- especially the smallest A-- and so the paint bled through.

Next I mixed the acrylic paint and fabric medium I had found in the dusty shadows of the imposingly large sewing box that is shoved into the back of my mother's closet. It is rarely open, a testament to the days when my mother was crafty. Then, in her words 'I had kids' and the box remained closed.

 I generously applied the paint, hoping that the stencil would hold and I wouldn't have ruined what was a pretty good shirt to begin with. That's the problem with crafting with good things. If I had ruined that pair of shoes, I couldn't have cared less, they were falling apart anyway. However, I liked this shirt.

After waiting forever for the paint to dry, I cautiously pulled the freezer paper off. While there was a little bleeding, and it looked a little rough, I still loved the end result.

Also, considering I (or my church) had all the necessary items on hand, it cost me nothing! Now I can spend that 20 dollars on something else (oh who am I kidding, it goes into saving).