This is one of those projects that is just stupidly simple, but turns out super awesome.

I found some plain black canvas tennis shoes at Target for $9. They fit well and I couldn't pass up such a good deal, but the shoes themselves - pretty boring.

No before picture - I'm pretty sure you all know what plain tennis shoes look like.



I just stuffed them with newspaper, splattered them with a mixture of bleach and water, and rinsed them off in my kitchen sink. Took a couple of days to dry post rinsing (it would have been quicker if I could have put them out in the sun, but it rained like crazy).

Action Shot:


I'm ridiculously happy with how these turned out. I've gotten a ton of compliments on them.

These are super-cute! I love the idea of a sweetheart neckline on an apron.

Did you iron the freezer paper to the shirt?

I did! And it still bled!

Thanks for all the nice comments everybody, I feel much better about it.

The plan here was to cut a heart out of freezer paper and spray around it with bleach so that the heart shape would be in the negative.

Here is an artist's rendering of what was supposed to happen:



And here is what actually happened:



It just looks like I accidentally spilled bleach on myself and, to add insult to injury, the bleach completely bled under the freezer paper, so the heart doesn't even look right.

Things I Have Learned from this Project:
1) Use the spray bottles that are with the travel-sized shampoo not the ones with the cleaning supplies.
2) If you're spraying something and the spray has gone out of control FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP SPRAYING. Spraying more to "fix it" is not going to work.

Don't you worry about me though, I've got a plan for this thing.

This turned out super-cute. I'm in love with that polka dot lining!

[Stencils:]

First project posted on Craftster! Woot! I mostly just copy & pasted this from my blog because I'm tired and lazy and it's ridiculously hot out. I promise I won't do that all the time.

These are the very first shirts I've ever stenciled. It was, um, a learning experience.

(Okay, I'm being hard on myself. They're not bad considering they're my first ones and I suck at using exacto knives. I'm just a perfectionist sometimes.)



The sunglasses shirt actually turned out the best, which surprised me because it was my practice stencil. I picked it out just because I knew it would be easy to cut, to sort of ease myself into stencil making. Apparently there's some truth to the saying "Keep It Simple Stupid".



As you can see, it's cracking a little bit, but I don't really mind.



Poor robot. His heart is black because it's cold and metallic and cannot feel love. Also he is slightly off-center which is going to bug the crap out of me.

And he looks wonky when I wear it because, well...boobs.




This one turned out okay, but I really should have done it on a shirt that wasn't so dark (and, y'know, made sure it was centered (seriously, it's going to make me crazy, oh my god)).

Stencils: Stencilry
Materials: $4 Wal-Mart tees, freezer paper, and good ol' cheap-ola Tulip fabric paint.

This is great. It looks fabulous on you!

Oh my gosh, these are so cute!

I am completely in love with those coasters.

Even when it was INTENDED to be used as a microwave cart, I never liked it. it was just one of those things we absolutely needed at the time

I know what you mean. I don't know what it is about microwave carts, but I don't think I've ever seen one that wasn't completely fugly.