Try, try, try again! Freezer paper stencilling...

I had fail after fail with this project.  I don't know why, but it didn't like me.  I'm happy with the end result, but it took 4 t-shirts, 3 different methods, and a whole lotta cursing to get there.

It all started with my daughter coming to me on Thursday morning and telling me that on Friday everyone was going to wear t-shirts from the college of their choice to school.  Ok, well - not a problem if she wanted to got to school at UT (we live in Austin).  You can buy a UT shirt at Goodwill or the grocery store... pretty much anywhere.  But no, she wants to go to BYU, which is where I graduated from.   Proud mama I am, but I dislike this 24 hr. notice business.  And it appears to be happening more and more often.  Grumble, grumble.  

Have no fear though, I'm pretty good with my hands.  I knew I could probably whip something up for her pretty quickly.  I've seen freezer paper stencilling tutorials all over the internet, but I went with the one my good friend Char wrote up at Crap I've Made.  I really liked the look of the bleach method, so I tried that one first.  As much as I love Char, her tutorial did not work for me.  Maybe she forgot to add that you must actually BE her in order for the tutorial to work.  In fact I tried her spray bottle method as well as a bleach pen method I'd heard of.  Neither worked.  Phooey.

So, going back to square 1 and back to Char's blog, because in the end I still trust her, I tried the painting method, using this:

Worked like a charm!  For whatever reason, my bleaching technique needs a lot of work!  That's ok though, paint and I are old friends.  I should never have strayed away from it to begin with!

Today I am actually going to show you the shirt I made for my son, because I am entering it into the "Let's Hear It For The Boys" t-shirt contest over at "I Am Momma, Hear Me Roar".  And it turned out much cuter then the BYU shirt, anyway.  Tomorrow I will show you the shirt I made for my daughter, along with instructions on how to avoid my series of catastrophes.

The concept for this t-shirt came to me months ago, and it sat in the back of my mind until Adriana came to me with her request yesterday.  I figured I may as well make both t-shirts as long as I was at it.  The big D, little d stand for my youngest son's name.  But I also wanted to illustrate something else that started with "D" on the t-shirt.  And so I doodled and doodled both dinosaurs and dogs until I came up with this:

Love how my little guy rocked his shirt to school this morning!  He had me scared.  No, seriously... he roared a loud and terrible roar for this picture and I had to tell him to keep it down!  Lol.

Here's a close-up:

 

I love it.  Did you know that "RAWR" is how dinosaurs say "I love you"?  

It's true. ;)