Camping Craft: DIY Bleached Shirts

We just got home from a great weekend camping.

We had a great time with great friends, food, activities and even crafts. I am going to share with you one of our crafts: Reversed Tie-Die or Bleached T-Shirts. 

The reason I selected these t-shirt is they are easy. They have minimal parts. Low prep work. And so much fun to make!

Supplies:

1. t-shirts. I would suggest using 100% Cotton t-shirts. We got lucky JoAnn Fabric had them on sale this past week 3/$9.99.
2. Tacky Spray. I bought Arlene's Re-positional Tacky Spray.
3. Card stock
4. Design. I made my letters using a Cricut Machine and two different fonts: Going Places had the tent that I made into an A. Birthday Bash is what I used for the letters C, M, P.
5. Cookie Sheet and a Rag
6. Bleach.
7. Empty Spray Bottle. 

The process is easy. I had about 35 campers and asked ahead of time how many of those would be making t-shirts. I then sat at home one evening and used basic card stock and cut out letters. 

 I made two different size letters. For the children I used 2 inch letters. For the adults I used 2.5 inch letters. After I cut out the letters, I put them in a zip lock bag and packed them to take to the camp-out.

The next step is sitting down with your shirt. I turned the letters over and sprayed the backside of them with a little tacky spray. I then positioned the letters the way I wanted them on my shirt.

Next, I put the cookie sheet in the shirt between the front of the shirt and the back. You do not want the bleach to go all the way through the shirt. I even put an old rag on the cookie sheet to soak up excess bleach.

                                      
I filled a spray bottle with 70% bleach and 30% water. (I made this up before I left home. We did not even use one bottle of bleach solution.) The next step is to spay the shirt with the bottle of bleach solution.

Let the solution sit on the shirt for a little bit. Carefully lift up on of the letters and see if the bleaching process has worked. When it has, quickly remove the letters and rinse the shirt in cold water. Once all of the bleach is out of the shirt, let it dry.

As a note, we had a super hard time getting pink shirts to bleach out. I am not sure if it was because they were pink or a Cotton/Polyester blend. Black worked very well, I just did not get a photo of it.

There you have it. One of the crafts we made on our recent camping trip!  I hope you have as much fun making them as we did. That's what it is all about right...making memories.


I linked up!