12.15.2010

Snowflake Shirt Stencil

When I'm at a store and find plain t-shirts, (a pet peeve of mine is that you can hardly find a child's shirt without some crazy graphic on it, or even a simple graphic on it... I'm talking plain, solid, no embellishment shirts) I buy a couple because I never know when I might want to bust out a little craft project, and embellish it myself.

About a month ago, I had one of these urges. So I pulled out one of the plain, white, long-sleeved shirts I bought at Walmart (for $3.50!) Here's what I did.

1. Printed out a snowflake design onto the paper side of freezer paper. Just cut your freezer paper down to a standard paper size and run it through your printer as you would plain paper.
2. Using an exacto knife, I cut out the snowflake, being sure to keep the little circles and pieces.
3. Then, I iron my freezer paper onto my shirt with the waxy side down. Iron long enough that the wax melts and makes the paper stick to your fabric.
4. Paint your stencil. I just used regular craft paint. I love using the fabric paint because it washes up nice and soft, but if you don't have any on hand you can always use regular craft paint. It isn't as soft, and it may crack, but I don't mind the look it creates.

I did a layer of creamy beige, and then a layer of pearl finish to give it sparkle.
And a close up of it painted. 
5. Wait for it to dry. I always get excited to see the results and peel it off before it's entirely dry, and it doesn't seem to hurt- just peel off slowly.
6. Once completely dry, no rushing it on this step, heat set your paint by pressing with a warm iron for 30 seconds over each portion. If you are afraid of paint transfer, use a pressing cloth in between painted design and iron.

The results: 

We love this shirt because it's cute, yet neutral enough to wear with a lot of different things. Plus it works great as a layering shirt too. This is our little way of bringing a little snow to Texas!

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