Freezer Paper Stenciling by Hand Tutorial

Hey-o people in cyber space!  I have been freezer-paper-stenciling t-shirts for a few years now, and after our trip to Disneyland this week (for which I stenciled 6 shirts), people have been asking for a tutorial.  There are actually a lot of tutorials on the web, many of which use cricuts or silhouette machines,  but I figured I'd show you that someone you know can do it by hand and so can you :)

Here are a few examples of shirts I've made with FP stenciling:

PREGNANT SKELETON

This is how I announced my pregnancy on Halloween, 2014

The old PEPSI LOGO

I was hired to run the Pepsi Challenge for MomDoc (largest OBGYN in the SW US).  They were throwing an 80's party for their staff.  They even had the Back to the Future DeLorean there. 

 Please excuse the pregnancy belly ;)

Of course it looks better on Megan (This was for 80's day at their school in 2015)

LUCKY St Patty's day shirts

I LOVE YOU.  I KNOW.

We have always been huge Star Wars fans, so this was my Valentine's Day gift to my Valentine :)

BOOK CROOKS

Matthew and three friends competed in the 2016 Battle of the Books.  The kids are given a list of 30 books of which they have to read at least 20 by the time the competition rolls around. At the competition the kids are asked questions from the book and when they answer they have to cite the book and state the author.  They named their team the "Book Crooks: Kern County Library's Most Wanted."  They approved the design and I made them all these shirts that they wore with black or red bandanas.  They had so much fun and Matthew ended up getting an honorable mention out of hundreds of kids!

   

2016 HARRY POTTER MARATHON

During Spring break 2016 our friend, Houston Goodman, flew in from Arizona and the kids had a Harry Potter Marathon.  So fun!  Here are the shirts I made them-  These babies were tedious!!

Our March 2016 Disneyland trip with our friends:

Aaron's 
SNUGGLY DUCKLING shirt
An homage to Tangled

My 
MICKEY AND MINNIE KISS shirt

John's 
SPACE MOUNTAIN SHIRT

 (Did you know Disney permanently changed Space Mountain to Hyperspace Mountain??? LAME)

Chrissy's
MARY POPPINS SHIRT

Megan's
bleached-out MEGARA SILHOUETTE SHIRT  

Jenna's

bleached-out ANNA SILHOUETTE SHIRT

They wanted to match ;)

Matthew's

bleached-out YODA SILHOUETTE SHIRT

(I sprayed with glow in the dark paint before bleaching and I added green paint for the light saber)

A girl in line at Disneyland offered to buy Matt's shirt.  LOL

I also wanted to show our elk head Christmas shirts, but I couldn't find any pictures :/ Oh well!

--------------OK!  Now for the tutorial!!------------

Freezer Paper Stenciling (by hand) TUTORIAL

You need:

Shirt- prewashed

Paint- any paint that's meant for fabric. Puff paint, slick paint, fabric spray paint (that's a new thing and it makes this even easier)

Freezer Paper- found at the grocery store in the tinfoil/ziplock bag isle

X-acto knife or Box cutter-with new/sharp blade

Self healing mat or cardboard

Printer with paper or cardstock

Tape- scotch

Foam brush-or other paint applying tool

Iron

Sharpie for correcting mistakes on black shirts
Flattened cereal box or cardboard to stick in between the shirt layers- you don't want paint or bleach coming through to the back!

Meg and Matt's friend, Sadie's birthday party was this weekend.  I decided to make a shirt to match the stuff I bought her, so I'm using this opportunity to make your tutorial :)  The notebook and tote bag say
"Sunshine is instant happiness"

I looked online for pictures of sunshine happy faces. 

I didn't find one that looked exactly the way I wanted so I just chose the closest thing and edited it, I also added Sadie's name and changed the color to grayscale so I wouldn't use up expensive ink

Then I cut out freezer paper the size of printer paper and taped it together to run through the printer.

Make sure to only tape the top and bottom so that the picture prints as smoothly as possible.  Make sure the plastic/shiny side of the freezer paper is taped down to the printer paper so it will print on the paper/dull side. ALSO I like to use cardstock.  It seems sturdier to me, but you can use regular paper if you want.

Print, remove freezer paper from printer paper and cut out with an X-acto knife or box cutter on a self healing mat or cardboard.  If your design is big and easy then you could cut it with scissors.  Use your discretion.

 Be mindful of which part of the paper you will be using.  If I want the outline, rays, happy face, and name to be painted surrounded by pink t-shirt, then I use the paper on the left.  If I want those things to be t-shirt color with paint in the negative areas, I would use the design on the right (like the bleached-out t-shirt design).

 Iron at high temp right on to the shirt.  Make sure to go over each part specifically to make sure it irons down.  Let it cool and seal the plastic bond before painting.

 Yes, I ironed on those TEEENY insides of the letters.  Don't throw them away!

Now don't forget to put some cardboard or flattened cereal box between the layers of your shirt.

 Time to paint!!

Use a foam brush to dab paint on.  If you pull the paintbrush across the shirt instead of dabbing, you can push paint between the stencil and the fabric, which you don't want.  Once the first coat is done, you can then pull the brush across because the first coat seals the edges down.  I usually do 3 coats, drying completely between each.

 I'm impatient.  You don't need to use a blow dryer like I did. I don't always but I needed to send this gift with the kids in a matter of minutes.  I'm a procrastinator.

Once COMPLETELY dry, pull it up!

The paper will rip in small places.  It's ok, just pinch it and pull it off.

HOW CUTE IS THAT?!?!?:!

 I love this happy sunshine shirt!  I want one!

Other noteworthy tips:

-A hint for anyone doing this for the first time- if you use a black t-shirt you can fix mistakes with a black sharpie ;) 

-You can change it up with different textured sponges, paints, and even striped or otherwise patterned shirts :) 

-Beware: NOT ALL PAINTS ARE CREATED EQUAL! One I got for really cheap ended up being too watery and made the stencil soggy.  If you get a paint like that, don't throw it away, just let it sit out to thicken up (but the best bet is to not get the absolute cheapest paint you can find like I did ;)

-For the bleached-out version: just iron on the negative of the stencil like I mentioned before, put your cardboard between the layers of the shirt, and lightly spray with straight bleach. As soon as it turns the color you want, rinse out immediately, remove any remaining stencil, and then wash with detergent in the washing machine and dry in dryer.  *note: please use gloves and mask when using bleach

If you use this tutorial, please post pictures of your creations!  I'd love to see the great designs you come up with!

HAVE FUN!!! 

Home-Made Rubber Stamps

I thought the price of rubber stamps was ridiculous so I bought a 49¢ 2 pack of erasers and used my rusty broken box cutter to make my own! That was fun! I need more erasers!

I am in charge of

An aquarium field trip

Stamp 200 hands!
(Written in haiku form in honor of Haiku Wednesday)

just going through old boxes

and discovering old photos....

age 4

now you know why they called me wide-head baby human.

age 19

chopped and dyed

age 20

(I made those pants out of yellow polyester pants and a green turtleneck from Savers to change them into bell-bottoms.  And then added some hippie flower embroidery at the hemline)

Christmas a bit delayed

Hey friends and family- I thought February would be a good time to post about our christmas... he he. sorry it's taken so long!

Well, I guess I should take this chronologically......
First, the christmas tree. The poor poor christmas tree....

First of all, I can't complain because we got this twig of a tree for free from someone on freecycle last year, but it's seen better days. When it came to decorating this thing, we couldn't find our christmas box with all of our ornaments (I think maybe it got thrown out on accident- either that or burried too deep in our storage closet to ever make it out). Anywho, we didn't want to go and buy new ornaments since we were a little short on the moolah, so i sat down with a pair of skizzers and cut all these bad boys out---
here are a few that I liked
now you might ask, what is a mallet doing on your tree??? well, if it's got one of these, it got hung by the kids no matter what. I laughed histerically for a few minutes after I found it hanging on here!

On Christmas eve I realized that we had no stockings to hang since they were in the same box as the ornaments, so I real quick (a little too quickly) sewed some stockings for us and the kids. Unfortunately I wasn't very careful when cutting them out with the rotary cutter and sliced a bit of my fingertip off (on the right). not too big a chunk, but it didn't feel too hot....

Christmas Morning- lots of fun presents and we had fun fishing with the santa fishermen stocking stuffers

The aftermath....Later we went to Grandma and Grandpa Shumway's house for presents and then family brunch-

Grandma Shumway made a Dorothy outfit for Megan's American Girl Doll- It matches her halloween costume- in fact it was made out of the left over fabric :o)

Matthew got a fur-real friend puppy dog that barks and wags it's tail. He thought it was for Megan and tried to give it to her when he opened it (she's got 2 other fur-real friend pets so he thought it was a girly toy). Megan ended up crying about it and Matthew was still confused by the whole thing. They've resolved the whole thing. Here they are with their pets:

Aaron's aunt Susie made some cute confections for the brunch. Here is my favorite- it's a christmas mouse which consists of a chocolate covered cherry stuck to a hershey kiss with peanut ears, heart sprinkle eyes and nonpareil nose all held together with chocolate "glue." It was so cute I HAD to take a picture with my NEW CAMERA!

Karen ended up getting the same camera that Aaron got me so we had lots of fun trying out the cool features on our new toys.... here are a few silly "art" pictures I took. Everyone was laughing at us as we posed different center pieaces or salt and pepper shakers to photograph. Now I'm wishing I had taken more group pictures of family. oh well.

I think that my favorite picture of the day was this one of Matthew posing in front of the rainbow as we were leaving.
All in all a good Christmas.....

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night!