Valentine doily print t-shirts

I've been waiting so long to make these doily print t-shirts (and maybe other stuff like this and this) from The Artful Parent.

They turned out to be much more frustrating than they looked.

Luckily I ran some tests on paper with tempera paint, and then used the fabric paint to test a tea-towel. I ran the test after Starboy went to bed, and it was such a disaster, I decided not to offer it as a project for him and Mary Jane to do together.

The prints were so-so, and the doily permanently adhered to the paint and the fabric. Impossible to remove. Except for the shredded, wet, sticky pieces I could pick off. I thought that by washing it the next day, or running it under cold water and scraping the pieces, it would be fine (as other commenters noted on Jean's blog), but the bits really just didn't want to come off. Frustrating.

Despite this bad luck, I soldiered on and tried the same technique on Starboy's t-shirt, and was surprised to get the same results!

Shocking.

 So Starboy's t-shirt looks a little layered-grungy-indie-rocker-hipster-ish.

I decided to quit while I was ahead and leave it be. It actually does look a little cool, and he doesn't seem to mind.

I wised up for Mary Jane's shirt. I had no problem applying the fabric paint to the doilies, and getting a lovely stencil effect. I was doing this on a piece of printer paper, and those lovely, shiny red stencils went to Miss Molly, to decorate her shop window.

So I used that as a technique on Mary Jane's shirt, and Leah's light blue one. Success! Very cute. And finally, as easy as previously described.

The conclusion I came to is: there are doilies, and there are doilies. I was using very thin paper doilies, and any bit of moisture caused them to disintegrate, and melt to whatever they were touching. There must be other, sturdier doilies out there. Or, if you wanted to take the time, I suppose you could cut a stencil using the doily as a pattern. But you'd have to be....I dunno...either childless or OCD to take that on, I think. 

Then again, the issue could be with the paint. Maybe a different brand would have worked better, especially since the tempera paint didn't have this problem on the cards.

The shirts, btw, were organic cotton from H&M ($6), the doilies were standard issue (half off sale last year) and the fabric paint from Michaels ($4ish). Not sure that I can recommend the fabric paint, given my results.

Valentine doily print cards

I've been dying to make these Valentine's doily t-shirts ever since I saw them on The Artful Parent. But since I only had a few t-shirt blanks (one each for Starboy, Mary Jane and Leah,* I thought it would be a good idea to run some tests before trying the shirts.

So, this year it was a doily heart printing Valentine year.

We placed the doily on a card, then rolled tempera paint over it with a foam roller. Then, we moved the painted doily to a second card to make a print.

A third card was placed on top of the painted doily, and Starboy ran the brayer across it to make the print on the second card.

This way, we ended up with three cards for every process, which meant that by the time Starboy was tired of making them, we had enough to send to everyone! You can see in the image here the variety of prints we came up with.

I wonder how much paint Jean and her kids used to make their prints—she seemed to have far better results than we experienced. I was really glad to do the tests, so we'd have good luck on the shirts. Fingers crossed!

By the way, I really can't recommend the tempera paint I found at Micheals. I thought I'd save myself some shipping by buying locally rather than ordering from Discount School Supply. The Michaels tempera filled the house with a sickening chemical smell, and all of the red paint dried as pink. I returned all five bottles that I had bought. This wasn't a problem I had with DSS tempera.

*Nearly everyone gets a code name, to help with privacy.

Valentine artwork

While we were making Valentines yesterday, Starboy couldn't resist the red tempera paint and insisted on painting his hands with the brush. So we experimented with some classic heart hand prints.

We have these great frames in our den that allow you to change artwork whenever you want. The whole front of the frame opens, and you can store up to 50 prints inside.

It's a great way to change the seasonal look of your home while keeping it simple.

Styrofoam print-making

I've been dying to try styrofoam printing with Starboy for ages.  I got the idea from The Artful Parent. The results are fantastic!

To hasten the process, I drew some shapes on the styrofoam in advance. This cut down on the number of steps to the process. I used washed take-out containers and styrofoam plates. This is the killer of the project, knowing you're using foam you are just going to throw out. If this concerns you, try to recycle some that will be tossed out anyway.

Starboy rolled the brayer through a glop of tempera paint. The paint is in a small, flat tray (recycled heat-and-serve mac & cheese container.)(Don't judge. You know it's delicious.)

He laid a piece of paper on top of the wet positive, then rolled the back of the paper with a second, clean brayer.

Carefully peeling away the paper revealed a beautiful positive image! (Okay, the photos aren't exactly sequential, but you get the idea.) I encouraged him to keep the prints to one end of the paper, so we could turn them into note cards, but that only happened with intensive guidance.

That laundry mountain in the background? We're ignoring that. We have priorities.

I only showed him the process one time, and he was off to the races on his own.

I did make a drawing of a truck on the fly, and when he discovered that new images could be made on the fly, he started to demand more trucks, wanting to make only one print of each one. For your first attempt at this, it might be a good idea to pre-make the printing "blocks" and keep it at that, unless you have all day to spend!

This project was lots of fun, and really satisfying. I enjoyed it, too! If you have older kids, this would be a great idea for a Valentine's Card-Making after-school gathering.