Homemade 80's Shirts

 One evening last week, the girls were trying to decide what to wear the next day.  They were wishing they had one of those cool, trendy (80's flashback) type shirts.  You know, the ones that sortof hang off of one shoulder?  Yeah.  Well, I said, "Hey, that's no problem!  I used to make those all the time in the 80's!"


So, we dug out a few of their dad's old under shirts and proceeded to re-design them into those cool, flashdance-looking shirts.

Since I had a shirt that was similar in design, we laid it out on the floor to get an idea of the shape.

Then I had them try on the T-shirts while I outlined the shape they wanted with a yellow, washable marker.

We cut out the neck.  Then cut off the edge of the sleeves.  Patie wanted hers shorter in the front than in the back, so this is how we cut it... front layer first, then the back.  Ruthie's had a slit on one side so she could tie it.

We thought a lacy design would be cool.  I'm kindof burned out on tie-dye.  Again, the 80's.

We dug out an old, very old table cloth with a nice design.

And cut a big corner off.

Then we mixed up some paint...  we used plain, old craft acrylic paint watered down.

 We made a light greenish one.                                                      And a pinkish one.

                                         

We tried laying the lace on the shirt and then spraying the paint on top.  That turned out pretty cool, but not a very distinct lace pattern.  So then, once the lace was all painty, we tried using it as a sortof stamp.

We just laid a sheet of aluminum foil on top, and then just smoothed it down without moving the lace.

We re-painted the lace every now and then to get a nice dark stamp design.
THAT was the ticket!  Isn't this pretty?!

Then we just added a few sprays of color here and there.  We actually tried adding new paint colors to our spray bottles as we went along.  We added a little royal blue to the light green.  And some purple to the pink.  And then made some new prints on top of the old ones.  It was such a neat surprise!


The front looks like this.  Much more paint and splashes.

The back looks like this:

Softer colors and a more lacy pattern.  I like both ways.

Both girls wore their shirts to the park to hang out with their friends and guess what...  yep, now they all want one, too!

You can't really go wrong with this project.  It's so free-form and messy!  It's probably best to do outside--  with a drop cloth.  Keep in mind that acrylic paint is very NOT washable, so wear junky clothes while you're making this big messy project.  Once the shirts were dry from hanging out, I put them in the dryer to set the paint.  Then I washed them on cold and dried them again.  The paint should hold up better than dye and last indefinitely.  Or at least until there's a new trend that we've just GOT to have!  ; )

When we were all done, I told the kids to pour out the paint and wash the spray bottles.  This is what they did:

Who could resist spray painting the flowers??

Reminded me of the queen on Alice in Wonderland.

Anyways, have fun with this one!  It's a great summer break, messy project and you probably already have all the stuff you need. Yay for that!

Artfully yours,
jen