Freezer Paper T-shirts

I swear every summer a kid has to decorate a t-shirt or two. I remember going to girls camp and coming back with a puffy painted, sharpie-ed, or tie-dyed shirt and thinking it was the coolest thing in my wardrobe. And what can I say, I've been custom making shirts ever since. Some of my favorite shirts are ones I designed and worked on.

One of the easiest and most precise method I've found is using freezer paper to create your design. So today I'll run you through the basics of Freezer paper t-shirts. I use Reynolds brand freezer paper because it's extremely wide and the plastic coating works fabulously to adhere to the t-shirt. A good seal means your paint won't bleed.

Something that's not necessary, but makes the process go so much faster and less messy is using Tulip's Fabric Spray Paint. You can use any paint, but with this spray paint you are done painting in less than a minute. Also, there's no cleanup since you didn't use brushes, etc. 

Supplies:

Freezer Paper

Paint (and the methods of applying if you aren't using spray)

Pencil

Exacto knife

Mat to cut out on 

Iron & Ironing Board

Scrap Cardboard

4 paper bags

Iron

Ironing Board

Here's how you do it. First you cut a piece of freezer paper about 6 inches larger than the size of your design. You can sketch out your design ahead of time so you know how big you want it to be, and then trace it onto your freezer paper if you want. 

Then you use an exacto knife to cut out and remove what you want to be painted. This is the longest part of the process, making sure all the cutting is perfect. The inspiration for my design was the wall of a hotel I saw a little while ago. This type of pattern was repeated over and over again. I took a picture and sketched out one of the 4 squares, then repeated the pattern 3 more times

Next you place your design on the shirt where you want it to be, and iron the freezer paper onto the shirt (waxy/shiny side down, dull paper side up towards iron). Let the shirt cool completely.

Place a piece of cardboard inside the shirt under the design, just incase the paint bleeds through. Mask off the edges of the shirt, because sometimes spray paint can get everywhere. I use old brown paper bags and store them to use again and again.

Spray the paint onto the design. Let dry for an hour, then remove the brown paper bags and carefully peel off the wax paper. The material will still be a little damp, but you want to remove the paper before it completely dries. If you don't the paper will stick to the paint and make it hard to remove.

Let the shirt sit overnight and be ready to enjoy it the next day!

You can stick to one color, or you can get more intricate by adding several colors, one at a time. The above shirt was done with this method. I masked off the yellow and blue first (covering the yellow & peach when I was spray painting the blue, and vice versa. Let that dry completely, then masked off the black area and painted that (with craft paint and a brush).

Get creative! Try it out and post a link to your design!