My Summer Painting Project

This summer I wanted to try something other than the ordinary tye-die I always do with the kids. This experience came with a bit of a learning curve as I had only read about the project online and wanted to try it. I'll first start with explaining the process and at the end I will go more indepth with the good, bad and the uglies that we learned.

I first wanted to try out the project  before I set it down in front of a bunch of 5th graders. Duh! Maybe that's just the teacher in me or the human side of not wanting the screw up in front of others. Who knows!

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Supplies Needed:
1 roll of freezer paper (I bought mine at Walmart in the section with aluminum foil) You will need two pieces. One piece to draw your design on, and one to go on the underside of the fabric you are painting.

1 t-shirt or some fabric to paint. (I don't know how well this would work on canvas)

1 clothing iron

Scissors or and exacto knife depending on how intricate you plan on getting

Fabric paints in your choices of colors

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I started out by drawing my design on the paper side of the freezer paper. I just grabbed one of my old camp shirts to experiment with. No use in ruining a brand new shirt if this wasn't going to work, right?

I then used my scissors to cut out my design.  I placed one piece of freezer paper, with the wax side facing up on the inside of my shirt. I then placed my design on the top of the shirt where I wanted to paint my design. Using my hot iron (no steam), I ironed over the pieces of freezer paper and this kept the pieces in place. I then painted my design just before bed and left the project to dry overnight. In the morning, I woke up and peeled the paper off.  

The shirt is a neon green but you can't really tell from this picture.

The nice thing about this project is I didn't have to worry about flipping the letters as you do in some projects (like the iron-on transfer paper). Since you can't draw on the wax side, you always have a guarantee that you have the correct side facing down.

So, with that success, I decided that it would be okay to try it out with the kids. I planned this as a two day project for two reasons.

1) I knew that some kids would take forever deciding what they actually wanted to put on the shirts. Picking out a design would take them awhile.

2) I knew that since it took me a long time to get my design cut out, less nimble 5th grade hands would probably take longer.

This is a hat one student chose from the book

So, armed with a couple books of clipart and letter stencils, I handed out pieces of the freezer paper.

This is a picture that was printed off the internet

  

We placed the freezer paper over the picture and traced out the lines. We then numbered the pieces we would cut out and took a picture because I had a feeling we might need it for later!! (Which we totally did!)

Then, we began to cut out our designs. I wasn't sure how it would work out but I was able to figure out that by trimming the individual pieces, we could make a sort of valley in which the paint would go. See photo below.

Once all of the designs were cut out, I gave all of the students a small brown paper bag to put all the pieces to their project in. I wish I would have had envelopes because some of the smaller pieces got stuck in the folds at the bottom of the bag.

The Next Day

The next day, we used the iron to stick our designs to our shirts and then began painting. 

Here's my stencil

We used foam brushes because I had read that it was better since the bristles of a regular brush could find their way behind the paper stencil.

We started out by squirting the paints into styrofoam bowls

This seemed like a faster option

I brought the hairdryer because one of the kids wanted to put a design on both the front and the back. The other students started using it because they were impatient to peel their paper off!! 

When all was said and done .................................

WALLA!

The front of her shirt

The back of the shirt

This is the shirt I painted. I wanted to pick something that meant alot like
what the kids were picking. I picked this design
because I LOVE being Riley's mom!!

 Some things we learned:

1) Using dark or bright colored fabrics with white paints doesn't work so well. I had to put several layers of the white paint so that you couldn't see the bright pink showing through. We had the same experience with the white on a yellow shirt. The result was a thick, almost plastic feeling layer of paint. Also, this thickness made it hard to peel intricate details throughout the design.

2) By trimming the individual pieces, the possibility of designs is broadened. Think back to when you were in art class back in school. This is a classic lesson in negative space.

3) You have to save the insides!! Okay, so this sounds like a no-brainer, but you'de be surprised. When you cut out letters, you have to save "insides" of your curves. For example, when you draw the letter "D" as a block letter, it has a shape that looks like a big "D" on the inside. SAVE THIS PART!!! You have to iron on and "attach" this piece too. Otherwise, when you paint in your stencil, you'll fill in the shape and end up with something that looks more like a half-circle instead of the letter "D"!!

4) This project will make you a STAR!! Okay, well maybe I'm slightly exaggerating but when people see your designs and you tell them you painted it yourself, they will think you're a painting virtuoso. I've had so many compliments about the designs I've done and I think if your give this a try, you will too!!