Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is all about HOT. I knew exactly what I wanted to do for this project. I have been coming across these super cool hand painted tshirts all over the web lately and I knew that we just had to do it to! Hey, I even made my own logo for this weeks unplugged project *grin*.


We started by deciding what we wanted to put on our shirts. L wanted a pony so I found some pony coloring pictures online and let her pick her favorite :) A key component to these fun and easy to make painted tshirts is butcher's paper. It's brown craft paper on one side and waxy on the other side and can be found at pretty much any grocery store. We always have tons of it on hand for butchering so we didn't have to go far to get any :) Cut a piece of the butcher's paper the same size as a regular piece of white printer paper, 8x12 inches. You are going to print your image directly on your paper by running the butcher's paper through your printer. Make sure that you check which side your printer will print on and put your paper in the printer appropriately. You don't want to print on the waxy side!!


As soon as you've got your images all printed you can get started with your exacto knife and create a stencil by cutting out whatever portions of the photo you want to color with your paint.


K designed his own picture by drawing a ship that we scanned on the scanner and then printed on our butcher's paper. You could use any artwork that your children have done :) The simpler it is the easier it will be to cut out.


Now comes the HOT part :) Place your butcher's paper stencil, waxy side down on top of your clean tshirt and iron it gently on the dry heat setting. You don't want to use steam! It only takes a second for it to stick, sealing your paper tightly to the tshirt and your stencil is ready for painting.


You can use fabric paint which is specifically for using on material or you can use a fabric medium like Jo Sonja's pictured above. The fabric medium is really great because you can use it with any of your acrylic craft paints you already have on hand and it's way cheaper!! All you need to do is mix equal portions of acrylic paint and the fabric medium, mix well and voila.... you've got fabric paint :)


With your paint mixed you're ready to start painting :) Brush the paint on from the outer paper edge towards the middle of your areas. You don't want to accidentally push any of the paint under the paper edges so by painting towards the center and not the edges helps to prevent this. Make sure you use a generous amount to, you want to saturate the cotton to get a good even color. We put a layer of butcher's paper inside the shirt to just in case any of the paint went through. That way it would protect the backside of the shirt :)


Even if the stencil cutting portion of the project is to hard for younger children they can definitely get in on the painting portion. L's only 4, but she did a great job painting :)


When you're all done painting, hang your tshirts up to dry.


You don't have to wait until your paint is completely dry before taking your stencil off if you just can't wait like us *grin* Ours were still slightly damp to the touch when we started to peel our stencils off. They just come right off and if there are any pieces that stick just pick them off. It won't wreck your paint at all.


To finish off our project we needed to do one more HOT thing to them and that was to heat set our paint by applying dry heat to them again after they were completely dry to set the fabric paint :) As you can see they turned out really great!! The kids are thrilled and we now have some new clothing to *grin* Let me know if you make some to. I would love to see what you come up with!

Have fun!!

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Comments

Posted by Anonymous

Those are spectacular! What a great project!
smallworldathome.blogspot.com

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Posted by Anonymous

wow very impressed they came out great!

teachingtinytots!

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Posted by Christie

We are waiting to do this; should be soon. We are going to dye our t-shirts first but the fireweed needs to come up the stalk. We want them to be pink and it hasn't changed yet. With in the next week or so we will be doing it. Who Hoo. The shirts look awesome!

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Posted by MrsMomma

These are great! Thanks for showing how to do them!

-Heather

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Posted by Sandpiper

Love the shirts!! You always have the coolest ideas!

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Posted by Anonymous

Oh what a great project. I am definetly going to put this in my favorites. They would make great gifts for the kids to give out. Thanks.


Heather
http://gottfredsenacademy.blogspot.com

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Posted by Anonymous

I've been wanting to try these. Yours look great!

www.seekingimperfection.com

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Posted by Julie K in Taiwan

Those shirts are amazing! I've been tempted to try stencil shirts for a while, but haven't found the supplies here. You're inspiring me to look more carefully ;) My favorite is the owl, but the hot crafts made me giggle.

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Posted by molytail

Those look awesome!!! :-)

http://molytail.blogspot.com/

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Posted by jenn4him

Those are terrific! Have you started Core 4 yet? We are loving it.
Jenn

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Posted by Jacqueline

That is so neat!

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Posted by Anonymous

Great idea! I could get it all set up beforehand for my little one (only 2) and she would paint to her heart's content!

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Posted by Anonymous

Great idea!

One thing, though, and this reflects on your home-school ability- please correct the typos!

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Posted by CrossView

Oh my! They look fabulous! =D

Could you come down here to Jawja and homeschool us all for, say, a month or so??!!

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Posted by Mom Unplugged

Those are lovely! I especially like the theme t-shirt you designed (I really must come up with an Unplugged Project button for people's blogs). It looks like fun, and your explanation is wonderful. Thank you!

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Posted by socalval

Ok... I LOVE this idea! I think I might try this... Thanks so much for sharing.

Valerie

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