Stenciling a T-Shirt
Here's an easy/cheap way to stencil your own design on a t-shirt. The cost is minimal, the process is quick, and the materials are easily available.
what you need:
- a t-shirt
- a design, on paper.
- fabric paint - not the puffy stuff. I used "Tulip Slick".
- a paintbrush
- freezer paper, which can be found in the grocery store near the wax paper.
- an iron
The secret ingredient here is our stencil material, the freezer paper. One side of it (the shiny side) is coated in plastic, which you can melt with a hot iron. When you melt the plastic, it sticks to the t-shirt, but the bond is weak enough that you can pull it off when you're done painting.
what to do:
Here you can see my image, which I printed out in green. The image was a little messy, but I'll be tracing it, so no worries.
Trace the image onto the dull side of the freezer paper, and then cut out the parts of the image you want the paint to go through. Here, I'm making the white part of the image (the sheep's body and face). I'll get the black parts (the sheep's legs and outline, as seen here in green) later.
Iron the stencil onto the shirt - remember, shiny side down, since the shiny side is the glue that holds the stencil on.
You may want to put a piece of paper or cardboard inside the shirt, so that paint can't soak through to the back of the shirt.
Now, get painting! If you're using a dark color, one coat might be enough. But if you're putting a light color onto a dark shirt, you may need several coats. Keep the coats thin, and let each coat dry (about 5 minutes) before you apply the next one.
When the paint is dry, peel off the stencil! You'll see that I left a "bridge" between the sheep's eyes and the sides of its head. Later, I'll go back and fill in the gap. (another way to do this is to iron the eyes down separately, and not worry about a bridge).
For a two-color stencil, just cut out the next stencil and apply that. Here I had to paint very carefully to avoid getting black paint on the white parts of the sheep.
Wear your shirt proudly.