Sunday, June 5, 2011

DIY Father's Day Present

  Looking for a quick DIY Father's Day Gift? This is a fun, simple and very inexpensive idea that you can customize anyway you'd like and Dad is sure to Love it! Freezer paper painted shirts are very easy to make and I am sure there are lots of tutorials out there but I will just show you how I do it and you can go from there.
  All you need is Freezer paper (which can be found at your local grocery store and it will be in such an amount that trust me it will last you your whole lifetime, fabric paint however many colors you would like, a handy shirt or fabric that you would like to paint- it can even be something old that has a stain that you can just paint over it, a paintbrush, an iron, a craft cutter or a simple exacto knife and lastly a piece of cardboard!
 Ok, 1st step is to decide on what stencil or wording you'd like to use on your fabric. I chose "Best! Dad! Ever!" for Father's day. I made a whole bunch for Christmas and used different images from the web which is an option as well.
After you have decided what you want to paint, you need to stencil out. I used my handy dandy Cricut cutter to do this tedious part of the job, but at Christmas when I had no Cricut I printed my image or wording off of Word and traced it onto the Freezer paper (shiny side down) and cut it out with an exacto knife. Talk about TEDIOUS! So glad to have a Cricut now but like I said, it can be done.
  Once you have your stencil cut out of your freezer paper you need to place it on the fabric where you would like it, shiny side down. And iron it onto the fabric with a medium temp setting. Make sure to get all the corners and what not so that the paint will not bleed through. After you are certain it is glued down tight run your finger around the edges of the inside of the stencil to feel for any loose areas.
 Now the fun part- begin painting! OH But FIRST- Be sure and place a piece of cardboard between the layers of fabric because I promise you it will leak through. I used an old pizza box from the night before lol. I like to do about 2-3 layers of paint so that when it dries there are no see through areas. I find how many layers you need depends on the color alot. Black seems to always need more layers for me. Once you are done painting, set it somewhere your husband will not see it so that it can dry for up to 24 hrs.
  After 24 hrs. go ahead and pull the freezer paper off! Give it one last iron over and then you are done with your master-piece!
These 2 onesies are just a few that i made for my little man for Christmas- and Yes these were hand cut with an exacto. If you are looking for more info and tutorials on freezer paper painting be sure and check out Ashley over at http://www.lilblueboo.com/ She is amazing!!

7 comments:

  1. Great t-shirts and wonderful tutorial too!
    Love the superman one!

    Thanks for linking to a Round Tuit!
    Hope you have a great week!
    Jill @ Creating my way to Success
    http://www.jembellish.blogspot.com/

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  2. Stores over here don't sell freezer paper. We can get plain baking paper but not a waxed paper. I wish we could because there are so many projects like this that I would try if we could.

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  3. I have been dragging my feet about trying this. I should just suck it up and get to work. Thanks for sharing a clear and easy tutorial!

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  4. What a fantastic tutorial! I love being able to use readily available materials for projects!

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  5. Glad everyone found it useful!! Thar's great! UKZoe- wow, to bad they don't carry it! I was unaware of that, you learn something new everyday lol

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  6. Great tutorial. The shirt turned out great. Thank you for sharing.

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  7. Thank you for linking up to Bacon Time. For the first party it was a huge success with over 300 links. I am going to have a special give away next week just for linkers. I hope I didn't miss it on here, would you be so kind as to grab the bacon time party button for your post or blog. Thanks again, and hope to see you soon.

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