The Liebers: Lucky T-Shirts

It's March! March is my favorite month for reasons I've already listed here. St. Patrick's Day is a fun March holiday that doesn't seem to be as over the top as some other holidays have gotten. For me, it's just some silly fun and lots of the color green. Reading through this entire post, you'll be lucky enough to see St. Patrick's themed posts from seven talented bloggers, so make sure you stick around.

I'll be honest, I had a tough start for this theme. Mainly because I was stuck in February when we were supposed to be working on it. Of course when Karen reminded us all of the deadline, my procrastination super power kicked in and I was able to come up with a project and get it put together in one weekend.

This project is super fun, super cute, and super easy to adjust for lots of other holidays or uses. I did these myself, but I've done similar projects with the kids at Vacation Bible School and at the pre-school where I used to work. In order to make your own Lucky T-shirt you'll need:

t-shirt in whatever size/color works for you
fabric spray paint
stencils and/or fun foam to create your own
cardboard

That's all you need!

First, decide on a design for your shirt. Since we were going with a "lucky" theme, I chose shamrocks. I also cut the word "lucky" out of fun foam. I took a few of the shamrocks and cut letters out of them to spell the word "kid." Then I let the kids choose which combination they wanted on their shirts.

Place some cardboard inside your shirt to keep the paint from transferring and to make sure the front and back don't stick together. Lay out your stencils as you want them to look. You can do them all at once, or use more of a layering technique. That's up to you.

After you've created a design that you like, spray the shirt in wide sweeping motions. You want to be close enough to get the paint on the shirt, but not so close that the shirt gets wet or the stencils blow around. You can use lots of different colors and spray dots, stripes, or even whole blocks. It really depends on how you want the shirts to turn out.

Give the paint just a minute or so to dry and then remove your stencils. You can reuse them right away. They'll get sticky, but they don't really need to be washed. Please note, this is fabric paint, so it will stay on any other fabric it gets on. It will also stick your your hands. A few washes with some face scrub should remove it from your hands.

Let the shirt dry completely (about 24 hours) and then launder as usual. Unlike other tie-dye techniques, you don't need to wash the separately. I've done these several times and never had the paint transfer in the washing machine.