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Stenciled Heart Shirt - featuring Elmer's products
I made myself a sassy new freezer paper stenciled shirt last night! And you can have one, too! First off, download and print off the design that I made from the bottom of this post. (You'll need to be logged in to see it!)
For the first step, you will need your print-out of the design, freezer paper, a pencil, and either a window or a lightbox. Pull out a piece of freezer paper that is large enough to cover the design. The roll of freezer paper that I have is rather large, so after I pulled out some, I have to cut it down so that I don't have an overly large piece of paper to work with. I purchased my roll of freezer paper from Wal-Mart, but most grocery stores sell it. They will be with the wax paper and tin foil. It was on the bottom shelf and I almost missed it when I was looking for it.
Place the image under your freezer paper with the shiny side of the freezer paper facing down. (The shiny side is what will be ironed onto the shirt later and has the wax that will make it stick.) Then trace the design using a pencil and your window or lightbox. (I have an old x-ray viewing lightbox from my work that is quite big and bulky, but it works great for my purposes.)
Once your design is all traced out onto your freezer paper, grab your X-ACTO Gripster Craft Knife and Self-Healing Cutting Mat and CAREFULLY (that knife is SHARP!) cut out the hearts. I love how sharp the tip of the craft knife is, it goes through the paper so easily. And the mat is the perfect size for a project like this. It protects my table, and since its not overly huge, its easy to store and travel with.
Its up to you whether or not you want to keep the hearts you cut out, but you won't be needing them for this project. You might be able to use them for a future project where you dab the paint around them after they are ironed on. Could be rather cute!
At the end you should have a stencil that looks like this.
Grab yourself a plain t-shirt. I found mine in my dresser drawer. Its just a plain ol' work out shirt. (gasp, I have a plain shirt in the house! I know, its hard to believe.) Iron on your stencil, using the highest non-steam setting on your iron (mine is number 3, I believe). I aligned my stencil as close to the top right of the shirt as I could get without the hearts being on the collar. I like my designs to be off centered. Most times they are on the bottom and sides of my shirts. I'm just quirky that way. But you can place your design wherever you like it best!
Before you start adding paint, slip a piece of cardboard inside the shirt. This will keep the paint from soaking into the back of the shirt and give you a nice surface for applying paint. Grab a sea sponge. You can get these as most craft stores and are reusable so long as you wash off your paint afterwards. To make them soft to use, just rinse with water and then dry off with a towel. Using your softened and dried sea sponge, dab on your first color of fabric paint or even acrylic paint with fabric medium mixed in. Apply your paint to a 1/3 of the design at an angle.
Make sure to rinse off your sponge in between colors!
Next, to add a little fun to the shirt, I grabbed my light purple paint pen from my Painters Sherbet Swirl set. I drew in a little heart on the bottom left heart. The pen soaks into the shirt, so it took a few layers before I got the little heart to the color I wanted.
And here's what you get!
The shirt almost has an 80's feel to it, so I believe this next picture is required:
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