DIY (Frog) Drawing on Onesies

My friend recently had a Onesie drawing party and I had a chance to try out some Crayola fabric markers!

Things I learned:

1) Put cardboard inside the onesie or the markers will bleed through to the other side!
2) You need to put a lot of ink into the drawing or it will fade very rapidly in the wash (even to the point of disappearing completely after a single wash!). I drew all the 'lines' as a series of dots to really make them dark.  This was also helpful because the fabric stretches under the marker if you try to draw a line, so the dot method keeps things in place
3) Iron the drawing before washing (set to 'cotton,' iron on the reverse side of the drawing) to help it stay permanent
4) Wash separately (the Crayola website says for at least 3 washes) so that you don't dye other clothing!
5) Buy enough markers! You can't make strong colors if you run out of ink!
6) Stencils are another option if you find some patterns you like!

This is a red-eyed tree frog onesie I made, complete with fake trademark.  I drew a black outline of the frog first, and then added in color.  The markers bled together a little, so there are some areas near the black lines where the color gets darker, but for the most part they worked well.  You can see in the blue areas that I was running low on ink so I couldn't get the color quite as strong as the green and orange. 

This is the Crayola site regarding their fabric markers:
http://www.crayola.com/crafts/shirt-stylz-craft/

There are other fabric marker brands out there, I just haven't had a chance to use them yet! I've drawn on shirts using permanent markers before (definitely wash separately the first few times!) and they do fade after a number of washes, so I'm hoping that using real fabric markers will mean greater longevity!

DIY: Cheap Easy Screenprinting: Using a White Base for Better Colors

How to do Cheap Easy Screenprinting is here.
I recently wanted to make a print on a blue shirt (continuing the World Cup theme with Italy) and realized I most likely would need to have a white base coat to make the colors strong enough.  This turns out to be pretty simple.  Just make your initial print encompass everything you will eventually need colored.  In my case, this meant everything that needed to be red, green, yellow, or white.  This means the original print is pretty vague on the details, however, so it can help to make subtle lines to guide later painting (see the white circle which is lightly outlined in the initial print).  Once the white base is down, let that dry (do not iron), then simply hand paint on the next colors.  If you only need one color down, you could in theory just re-print on top of the white.  I was very happy with how the final colors turned out, and will definitely be doing this again whenever I have a multi-color print or am using dark colored shirts.  Hand painting on the screen printing ink works pretty well, however one of my colors (green) was not a very liquid mixture, and did not spread as well as I'd hoped.  The red and yellow however were pretty much just like any other acrylic paint.  I use paint brushes and sometimes toothpicks for smaller details.  

DIY: Cheap Easy Screenprinting: World Cup T-Shirts

I tried two methods of screen printing (two methods of making the screen really, one way of printing) while making some fan shirts for the World Cup.  The process is pretty easy, and I'm quite happy with my first-time results.  The ink is the biggest cost, and on a per-item basis it's still pretty cheap.  There are two major pauses during the process when waiting for glue to dry and when waiting for ink to dry.  I looked at a few other blogs for ideas, particularly this one and this one.  I decided to try both methods for screening.  For the Germany logo, I used a knitting hoop to attach the nylon.  For the Argentina shirt, we used a regular picture frame and duct-tape.  But first things first.

This project required: Shirts, Screen Printing Ink, Nylons, Frames, White Glue, and an image.

1) Image: First I made my image.  The two images are both adaptations on the soccer logos of their respective countries.  You will be able to see pretty much any image through the nylon, whether it is printed from a computer or drawn in pencil.

2) Nylon: Next I put the nylon on the frame.  This turned out to be tricky to do with only one person.  The nylon stretches well, but you need to tape it very well.  Putting it in the knitting frame one-handed turned out to be a nightmare, so in the future I think I'm sticking with the picture frames and duct tape (masking tape wasn't strong enough to hold the nylon).  You want the nylon to be taught, but not ripped.  Make sure that it is above the frame so that it will later be able to be flush against a t-shirt.  Here are the two methods (frame and hoop).  I definitely prefer frame.

3) Putting Image On Nylon: To trace the image onto the nylon, place the frame face down (nylon side down) on top of the image you want to make.  Very carefully trace the image in ink onto the nylon.  This is a very easy place to rip the nylon, so do not press down too hard.

4) Glue the background: Next, put glue around the image (from the top).  Wherever glue goes, no ink will go through.  A paint brush can be very useful here.  Make sure to give yourself a nice big buffer of glue around your image to make sure paint doesn't sneak onto the shirt around the edges.  You will need to let the glue dry completely before continuing, which can take awhile, and it doesn't hurt to hold the image up to a white wall or light source to double check to make sure there are no gaps in the glue.

4) Paint: Once the glue is dry, you can put your frame face down on your shirt.  Make sure it is flush with the shirt (add weights if needed) and add ink.  The darker the shirt, the harder it is to get good coloring.  For better coloring on dark shirts do a white print first, then follow with color.  Don't be afraid to put down quite a bit of ink, but make sure the nylon doesn't shift during the inking.  A piece of cardboard can be helpful for spreading ink.  Once you have gotten everything covered, slowly pull the frame off the shirt.  Wash the ink out of the screen if you wish to re-use it (do this before the ink dries!).  You will most likely need to touch-up a few places to get a solid coloring.  Once you're happy with the coverage, let the ink dry completely.

5) Iron: Once the ink is dry, you will need to iron the shirt to set the image.  Each type of ink will have it's own directions, but this is usually 2-5 minutes on each side.  Do not use steam unless specifically stated in the directions (the inks are water based usually).

6) Be Done: And voila! A home-made shirt with whatever design you fancy.  

T-shirt Drawings

This project was inspired by my brother's friend, who makes amazing animal drawings on t-shirts.  It's really straight forward; you just need permanent markers (or fabric markers if you're fancy) and blank t-shirts.  Note: they do fade over time unfortunately