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!