Friday, December 11, 2015

DIY Rebel Alliance Tshirts

I made something!!!

It is so much harder now for me to do anything creative. We are in a smaller house and my only work space is the dining table where we eat. So I can't leave any projects out!

We have three birthday parties this month. Money is always very tight so I tried to think of something I could make as a present. All three boys like "Star Wars" and I thought it might be fun to make something "Star Wars" related since the new movie is coming out.  Recently, I saw a man walking down the street with a Rebel Alliance tshirt on. I loved the graphic quality of the image and felt confident I could make something using the Freezer Paper Stencil technique.

There are freezer paper stencil tutorials all over the internet so I won't go into too much detail.

Materials:
Freezer Paper
Rebel Alliance image (there are lots on the internet)
Fabric paint (I used Tulip's Matte True Red)
Black tshirt
Foam brush


First, I searched for an image of the Rebel Alliance symbol and printed out an enlarged version.


I then laid a piece of freezer paper over the image and traced it with a pencil. I cut the image out of the freezer paper to make a stencil.  Once you have your stencil, you will need to place it on your tshirt with the shiny side down. Use a hot iron over the paper to get it to stick to the shirt. Make sure all the cut edges have a nice seal.

Time to paint!

I placed a paper shopping bag inside each shirt to prevent paint from soaking through. You will probably get some bleeding and you don't want it to soak through to the back of shirt. You want a nice sharp edge to your image so I prefer to dab the paint on with a foam brush. It is much better to dab paint on from above than smooth it on within the stencil. You don't want any paint to get under the edges of the stencil.


I don't like the black to show through so I did a first pass when the paintbrush and let it dry. Then, I went back over a second time. Once the paint has fully dried (don't rush this!), carefully remove the stencil. When you are peeling, bits of the freezer paper can sometimes get left behind. I pulled some off with tweezers. The rest will eventually come off in the wash.


I think the shirts look pretty cool! Hopefully, the boys will like them!