Freezer Paper & Go Broncos

I stumbled upon I Am Momma- Hear Me Roar recently and absolutely fell in love with so many of the neat projects she does. She is super helpful and shares all her tips so you can try them yourself if you're so inclined. My first crafty idea from her website that I decided to try was her "Freezer Paper Stenciling." You can find the full video tutorial here but I'll explain what I did too.

Supplies

Shirt or other fabric item

Tulip brand fabric paint

Freezer paper

X-Acto knife or other razor cutter

Pencil or pen

Iron

Extra piece of fabric

1. Decide what image and/or lettering you want to put on your shirt. Either print it out or draw it onto regular paper. For my shirt I drew out the 4 parts but for J's shirt I printed it since it was more complicated. I didn't take a picture of this part because it's pretty well... easy.

2. Place your image underneath a piece of the printer paper. Make absolutely sure that the shiny side of the freezer paper is facing down. This is essential for the rest of the project to work (explanation to come). Now trace your image onto the paper.

3. Once your done, it's time to cut the paper to create the stencil. The best tool to use here would be an X-acto because of it's small size and sharpness. I used a different razor we already had and it worked just fine. Try to be as careful as possible at this point and avoid as many ragged edges as you can (they'll show up on the finished product.)

Helpful tip: Avoid overshooting any line junctions (example at sharp corners) because if you over-cut you'll have more places the paint can bleed later on. Also make sure to keep the pieces you cut out because you might end up needing them (see step 5).

4. Place an extra piece of freezer paper inside the shirt to take up any extra paint that might bleed through. Iron your stencil onto your shirt. This is where the shiny side down part comes in. The paper is coated with plastic (aka shiny) and it creates a seal between the paper and your shirt. So make sure to really go over all the edges where you'll be painting to make sure they're set.

5. For my design, I needed to make sure I kept the inside piece of the bow. I just wanted an outline of the shape so I had to make sure to keep this one piece. Other instances where you might need the cut out pieces are: the inside of the letters D, O, R, B etc etc or any other images that have inside details. You'll see a lot more of this on J's shirt (all the letters had inside pieces.) Iron in your extra pieces, again making sure the edges are sealed.

6. Paint! There are many different varieties of Tulip paint (matte, pearl, etc) that add interest to your final product. The heart on my shirt was painted with pearl orange paint and it's nice and sparkly, perfect for a girl's shirt.

Helpful tip: Paint from the paper onto the fabric, edge to center of the letter/image. Even though you should have a pretty tight seal on the paper, you might want to be careful of pushing the paint under the edge just incase.

7. Let the paint dry slightly before peeling off the freezer paper. It isn't crucial that the paint is completely dry before this step, just be careful not to touch the painted parts too much. I took mine off after about 5ish minutes from finishing painting. Let the shirt dry overnight.

8. The next day, you'll need to set the paint onto the shirt. To do this, take a piece of scrap fabric/old t-shirt/dish towel and place it on top of your painted images. Run your iron thoroughly over the whole thing. When you take the extra fabric off you'll actually feel it sticking to the paint just slightly. You don't want to overdo it and pull off the paint but you do want to make it stick a little bit. And with that, you're done! You now have an awesome, home-made shirt.

My Shirt

J's Shirt

For J's shirt, each letter had an extra piece I had to save and iron in not to mention the different pieces of the Broncos logo.

Helpful tip: The paint suggests waiting 72 hours before washing which I recommend too. But it doesn't say anything about not wearing it ;-)

So now it's your turn to create something! Have fun!