DIY: April showers tees

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“April showers bring May flowers” or so they say. Well, I say make April showers fun with a rain inspired D.I.Y project. The weather is slowly warming up and my kids are longing for those special hours of outside play. While the clouds resisted to cooperate, we spent some time creating these great t-shirts. Kids love getting crafty, so take your little ones, nieces, nephews or cousins (or just your inner child!) and gather your supplies!

You will need:

* A pre-washed t-shirt

* Freezer paper

* Acrylic paint in colors of your choice

* Textile medium

* A foam or spouncer brush

* Exacto knife

* Cardboard

* Surface for mixing colors (I use the cover of a take out container)

* April Showers stencil

1. Make your stencil. Click on the link to get the April Showers stencil. Cut a piece of freezer paper to  fit the image's 8.5" x 11" size. Feed the piece of freezer paper through the printer manually as you print the image, making sure the artwork gets printed on the dull side of the paper. Carefully cut out the drops and cloud shapes with your exacto knife. You have made your stencil.

2. Iron the stencil onto your t-shirt. Place the stencil shiny-side down on the center of the t-shirt and press with your iron on the hottest setting. Do not use steam.

3. The part the kids love, mixing colors and printing! Mix 2 parts acrylic paint/ 1 part textile medium. Textile medium is great because you can use acrylic paints to paint, stamp or print on fabric without having to spend a big budget on textile inks and your project will be washable. Place the piece of cardboard inside the t-shirt, under the stencil, so that the paint doesn’t transfer to the back. Take your sponge brush and dab it on the cloud area. Make sure you cover the whole thing. If you’re letting kids do this part, let them have fun while guiding them.

4. Move on to printing the drops. Mix different colors and dab your sponge brush. For lighter colors, you may need two coats of paint. Let the first coat dry before doing the second one.

5. Let the paint dry for at least an hour or so. Gently remove the stencil off of the t-shirt. Your stencil can be re-used a few more times so don’t throw it away!

6. Heat set the design on the fabric. Using your iron in the hottest setting, iron over the printed area for 20-30 seconds. Do not use steam. Wear and enjoy!

My kids are very happy with the results and are proudly saying “I made this”. Now they’re thinking to make them as gifts for all their friends but I’m not so sure about that... Remember to supervise children while doing this project, only adults should do steps. 1. 2. and 6.

Have fun and please share pictures of your April showers tees!

Natasha K.

*on Etsy*

*on Facebook*

Fancy Pants

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I love fun underwear. All my favorite panties are in colorful prints. Alas, fun prints aren't always easy to come by (or so my mother, who gives me underwear every year for Christmas, claims). The solution? Print your own!
The following how-to uses an onion to turn plain white panties into multi-color concentric-circle panties. It's a somewhat quirky take on a project I recently saw on the CraftStylish blog.

Materials

  • White cotton panties
  • Onion
  • Knife and cutting board
  • Fabric paint
  • Paint brush
  • Cardboard
  • Aluminum foil or other impermeable surface to use as a paint palette
  • Depending on the kind of fabric paint you use, an iron and press cloth
Steps
Slice off one end of a firm, nicely shaped onion. For ease of handling, I used the top end, which has a little tip you can hold on to.

Pour a little bit of each of the colors of fabric paint you want to use onto a piece of aluminum foil or other impermeable surface (perhaps an old ceramic plate).


Slip the cardboard in-between the front and back of the panties to prevent paint bleeding through to the other side. You might want to pull the fabric tight and fasten it to the cardboard  with a couple of binder clips. 

Brush the fabric paint onto the onion and press the onion onto the panties. I started with a few black prints followed by prints in red, blue and yellow. I used the same piece of onion for all of them because I liked the effect of the residual black paint outlining the structure of the onion and the other colors blending together. I also liked all of the impressions being the same size. You can, of course, choose to retain the the integrity of each individual color by using separate onion slices for each. 


Follow the directions on your paint to set the color in the fabric. Ta-da! Fancy pants!

A couple of tips: My blue, red and yellow paints were on the thin side due to the fact that I had to reconstitute them once after many years of disuse. This seemed to work well to create impressions that weren't too dense. To create similar quality prints with my black paint, which was of a more typical, thicker consistency, I first stamped the onion onto a piece of paper before stamping it on the fabric.

Until next time --

Enjoy!


Linda