Custom Made T-Shirts Using Freezer Paper and Fabric Paint
I’ve been a bit quiet of late on the blogging front, not because I haven’t had anything to blog about (on the contrary, I have so many completed projects I still need to document) but just because life has become quite busy recently, what with the start of the new school term (and work) and various other family matters taking up my evenings.
One of the things I have been busy doing is making more of my own t-shirt designs. I have made a few t-shirts now using a method I learnt from other creative bloggers, which uses freezer paper to make stencils that can then be temporarily ironed onto a plain t-shirt in order to paint on any design of your choice using fabric paint. The great thing about this method is that it produces high quality results that last and look much much better than a printed iron-on t-shirt design.
After spending our summer bouldering in a place in France called Fontainebleau, both the boy and Mr. B came back requesting bouldering t-shirts (as a way, I suspect, of continuing to live the dream even once back into the daily grind of normal life). I quickly got to work, and after fiddling around on INKScape and GIMP for a few hours, had a perfect design that I nimbly turned into my stencil using the amazing freezer paper.
The great thing about making a stencil is that you actually get two stencils out of one cutting session, as you have a positive image and the negative image too (provided you cut your stencil out really really carefully with a sharp precision knife of course!). For both t-shirts I used white fabric paint and layered on three coats of paint.
two coats of fabric paint
Carefully peeling off the stencil
The Boy’s t-shirt
Mr. B’s t-shirt
You can see some of my other t-shirts here:
Old Skool Record Player t-shirt
Great! I’ve never seen that technique before. Looks v cool 🙂
You should defenitely give it a try Dilly!
I’ve been wanting to try freezer paper stencilling for ages but I’m a bit put off by all the careful cutting out of the shapes. I’ll have to give it a go one day though. Your t-shirts looks awesome 🙂
So clever! They look fantastic.
What a great technique! Looks tricky but well worth it. Where did you get your freezer paper? From what I can gather from your link, it’s not just the same as UK greaseproof paper because of the plasticcy side.
Hi, I buy it from Amazon, but you can get it in Hobby Craft too.
Thanks ~ that’s next on my project list now! If I can keep a steady hand and do a half-decent job, I might come back and share with you 🙂
Yes, please do share it with me!
I’ve finally got round to publishing my efforts – not as neat or as arty as yours, but I really enjoyed doing them. http://madebyyourstruly.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/craft-fairs-and-christmas-fairs-were-good-to-go/
Brillaint, your t-shirts look great! I especially love the butterfly one.
Thanks – it was the fiddliest to do but definitely the most fulfilling (despite the slightly wonky placement!)