Pin Meh

I was inspired by the Pinstrosity blog's upcoming Pinstrosiversary Challenge to get my act in gear and make something I pinned months and months ago. I had actually bought all the materials last summer, but never got around to it, so lack of budget right now was no excuse for this one.


My result? Well, it turned out just meh, just okay. It's definitely not a Pin Win, but it's not quite a Pinstrosity either. So I created a new catagory. Pin Meh.

I pinned this idea to create a custom t-shirt using freezer paper as a stencil a long, long time ago. Didn't hers turn out so well?

She actually drew her design freehanded, which is pretty far beyond my limited abilities, so I turned to my old faithful Photoshop Elements and created these two designs. (As always, click on a photo to see a full sized image.)
 

The one on the left is for my 6 year old daughter. She calls her daddy "Daddy-Boy", which he completely encourages because he thinks it's so cute. The one on the right is for my 10 year old son, who for some strange reason collects rusty nails and has been known to tell his uncles that he will do jobs in order to get them.

So I did my Photoshop Elements magic and printed this in plain black and white straight onto the freezer paper, cut to be 8.5x11 inch size. Then out came the Xacto knives and I painstakingly cut out the stencils. I made sure to cut away just the black and save any white that had to be cut out of the black.

Then I ironed the freezer paper stencils onto the t-shirts (after washing and drying the shirts, as per the fabric pain directions). I folded the shirts in half and ironed a crease and also folded a crease into the stencil so that I could easily line up the centers. Then I ironed the freezer paper on with, and then went back and added in all the little pieces. Tweezers were essential for this.

Next came painting. I used Stencil Spray spray on fabric paint, mostly because that was the only fabric paint available at Wal-Mart and I didn't want to go to another store that particular day. I suspect this is where my project went wrong.

The results were less than stellar. The Stencil Spray is a thick paint and didn't work well at all with the small details in my stencils. If I had used much bigger letters with fewer small details, or if I had used a thinner paint and brushed it on, I think my results would have been much better.

My son's isn't half bad and he likes it. But my daughter's was unreadable. The contrast between the red paint and the hot pink t-shirt isn't enough, plus the curly, messy letters I chose weren't near distinct enough. Since the words were the whole purpose for that shirt, I took a sharpie marker and outlined the letters. All I can say is at least it is readable now, although it's not all that pretty. Sigh. Pin Meh.