W's New Favorite Shirt and A Great Big Thank You!

I would like to start by sending out a great big  THANK YOU to CHILDHOOD MAGIC for linking to my blog in her last post.  Her mention has increased my blog traffic by ten fold in the past two days and I am very very grateful and just amazed!  Our family was having a bit of a difficult evening  yesterday and this helped to lift our spirits so much!  Somehow, it was a reminder of just how much we have to be grateful for and  of what is really important for us to focus on as a family.  I also just loved seeing the beautiful floating candles she made and her children enjoying them!

CHILDHOOD MAGIC is one of my favorite blogs and I find so many project ideas there!  This includes the inspiration to make W's new favorite shirt.

I traced wooden cut outs of a turtle, frog and snake onto a t-shirt and added in the details in pencil, then outlined it in elmer's blue gel glue.

I then let this dry till the following evening when I first painted the animals and then the rest of the shirt with acrylic paint mixed with water.  Next time, if I want to paint in details however, I will use a smaller paint brush since some of the paints bled past their outlines.   I also might make the outlines a bit heavier to help with this problem.  Once the front of the shirt was dry, I turned it over and painted the back in the same shade of blue.

The next day I soaked the shirt in warm water and scraped off the glue.  The shirt was a bit crunchy still from the paint so I ran it through the wash a couple of times and it became much softer.  W was just entranced by it.  Despite the places where the paint bled, it turned out beautifully.   It's the perfect shirt for a little boy who lives for nature walks!

I see so much potential with this technique and look so forward to making more shirts as well as scarves and possibly some seasonal wall hangings!  I'm also thinking that it could be really fun to do the glue outlines on handkerchiefs and have a play date where the kids can paint them using either squirt bottles or paint brushes.  The handkerchiefs could then dry while the kids play and they could take them home with directions for parents to soak and launder.  I think the kids would really love it!