I am so thrilled to have been featured again on the Crafty Crow, this time in their Fourth of July Round-Up with the Fireworks T-Shirts we made last year. I love each and every one of the comments that have been coming in and am so glad that so many of you had a great time doing this project with your kids. Click here to jump over to that post to get the low down and the "How To". Dawnetta sent a photo of the shirts she made with her kids... love it! Thanks so much for sharing, Dawnetta. Did you notice the heart center on the shirt on the right? Outstanding!
JayLeigh posted photos of the shirts her kiddos made on her blog, Pacific Northwest Nature for Families, such as these colorful shirts from her two youngest. JayLeigh has lots of action photos of the shirts in process and looks to me like they all turned out spectacularly.
So I wanted to mention to you that I actually started doing these shirts as flowers, not fireworks. That gives this project a longer season so it's not too late to fire up the fireworks. I mean flowers. Flowerworks?
Once you make your flowers, go back and add leaves, stamens, sepals and any other shazaam marks you would like. Of course don't forget the butterflies, caterpillars, and even...
... a sun. I made this shirt with my Zippy when she was about 6 years old (oh my, half her life ago!). She wanted a little flowerbed for her shirt, no bugs. You can see that these shirts do eventually fade so it's important to heat-set them as best you can.
I made these with patients at work once and one fella made a bouquet and drew in a lovely vase for his flowers. I love that- these crusty ol' coal miners, lumberjacks, truck drivers, and laborers roll into Craft Night and turn out some super great stuff. All they need is a chance.
OK so there you go, more inky fun. It's all about the color with this project! Thanks again Dawnetta and JayLeigh for sharing your photos and for all the visitors here in The Jungle. I appreciate every single one of my Butterfly visitors.
Have fun.
Addendum (7-8-11) I received an email from 4ofwands about her shirt fading and she suggested vinegar as a way to fix the ink. These do fade, mostly with the first washing, and I've been wondering about using a soda ash solution to spray on the design while the alcohol is still wet, before heat setting. I'll do a test with vinegar and soda ash and let you know how it turns out. Thanks---
Do you design the flowers the same way you design the fireworks (with circles of dots), then just add the leaves, etc.? I am a novice at this type of thing, but I would love to try this.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's exactly how you do it. If you add leaves over places where the rubbing alcohol is, the leaves may fuzz and expand. You can wait a bit until the shirt is drier if you want the leaves, grass, butterflies, etc to be sharper. Hope that helps and have a great time. I would love to see how your shirt(s) come out. Thanks for visiting.
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