This weekend I was at one of my favorite stores, the Dollar Tree, and saw that they had a bunch of youth t-shirts in stock. The shirts happen to be a blend shirt, cotton and polyester, which is best for crafting. You can find the same shirts at Michael's or Walmart for $4 a piece, and at the dollar tree they are of course, just a dollar. Today they had light pink and blue... Perfect for the girls!
My girls love to color, like most children do, and they love to display their art for everyone to see. So, we got out the sharpies and crayons and put our artwork on the plain t-shirts that I had just bought. Making the t-shirts is a pretty simple process as described below.
I had the girls look through some coloring books to pick out a design for their shirts. I didn't have white t-shirts this time, so I couldn't see the coloring books design through the shirt. So, I just eyeballed it. I laid the shirt on the table, front side up, and slipped a piece of paper inside of it to keep the marker from bleeding through to the back. Then I pushed all the wrinkles out, making sure there was a smooth surface to draw on. Once the t-shirts was flat, I drew the design on with a black permanent marker. I would suggest using a sharpie, as the marker I used was not, and the ink ran out quickly.

Once the design was laid out with the permanent marker, the t-shirt was ready to be colored. I had a box full of crayons, both the Crazy Art brand and Crayola. In order to create a nice filled in color, you need to apply some pressure when coloring. Having tried both crayons brands, the Crayola worked much better than the Crazy Art crayon. The Crazy Art colors got clumpy and didn't adhere well to the t-shirt. The Crayola crayons covered the t-shirt evenly and smoothly.

When I was happy with the design and considered it complete, I used an iron to set the colors to the t-shirt. I made sure there was no water in the iron. I turned it on the highest temperature for dry ironing. I found some white sheets of paper to iron with. I placed the t-shirt, design up on the ironing board, and the laid the paper on top of the design. I ironed the shirt with a few strokes over the entire design. I checked the paper to see if crayon transferred to the paper. The paper was covered with color. I removed that paper and put a clean sheet of paper on top and then ironed again. I repeated that sequence until no color transferred to the paper.
That is it! The t-shirt was finished!
The shirt can be washed in the washing machine. It is best to air dry, though I have put my shirts in the dryer also.


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