T-Shirt Series: Wonder Woman and Protoman

My t-shirt series continues with the Wonder Woman shirt that I did for our friend Sam.  She linked this t-shirt to me shortly before we decided to make t-shirts for everyone, and it made choosing her design easy.  The design itself...not so much.  I found the basic Wonder Woman design online, added the text to it in Photoshop, printed it, and later drew the shadows in by hand.  

Here's my basic pattern, if you're interested in using it.  Click the image to view full-size, then save it and print it .

This was actually the very first design we tried, but that first one was a dismal failure.  I didn't let the bleach process long enough, so the design was too faint.  So I remade my stencil and tried to do it again, but I couldn't get the stencil lined up correctly and, well,  it's now one of my favorite sleep shirts.  I ended up using paint the second third time around.

I am absolutely thrilled with the way it turned out!!  Here it is, side-by-side with the original:

And here it is, modeled by Sam:

I think our Sammy-Sam likes it too.  :)
Edit:  Sam just told me that after washing it once, her t-shirt is nearly threadbare.  I chose that shirt because it was so soft, but apparently they did too good a job of distressing the fabric.  So, a word to the wise: don't get the "well worn" (that's what it says on the tag) t-shirts from Target.  Or, if you do, make sure to hand wash it.  It looks like I'll be making another Wonder Woman shirt...

For her husband, Tony, Brandon chose a Proto Man design.  Because he wanted the image to be larger than 8.5x11, he traced it onto the freezer paper directly from his computer screen rather than printing it as I'd been doing.  I'm still not sure how he accomplished it so perfectly, but he did.  Here's the inspiration picture, with his finished design:

He did pretty much everything for this one; my only contribution was to dab the shirt with a paper towel to soak up the excess moisture during the bleaching process.  He seems to have the magic touch when it comes to ironing the pieces on.  The entire thing came out crisp, with no bleeding or loss of detail.

Pretty darned impressive, I'd say.

A special thanks to Sam and Tony for modeling the shirts for me, and letting me snap away with the camera, even though I'm pretty sure you both would have preferred to skip the exercise entirely.  :)

T-Shirt Series: MAtNAr and BLU

We made a number of t-shirts using freezer paper and bleach (or paint) for our family and friends for Christmas this past year, but the majority of them were not delivered until about 2 weeks ago.  My dad's Star Trek shirt was one of the first ones we did, but it was the only one that got posted.   Now I finally get to post the rest!

I'm going to start with Matt's, even though it was one of the last ones we did, because I actually took a few pictures of the process for that one.  Matt is currently working on a PhD in chemistry (yes, chemistry) so of course his had to be chemistry-related.  Brandon's first idea was to spell his nickname, Matnar, using elements from the periodic table, but there is no  "M" or "Ma" so we scrapped the idea and spent months trying to come up with something else.  In the end, we came back to that first idea, and just made up our own element for the "M".  I made the design in Photoshop, printed it, and traced it.  Brandon then cut it out, leaving all of the tiny pieces attached at the corners.  Normally, he would have detached them just before ironing them on, but this time he left them together as an experiment.  He put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt, then ironed the whole thing down together, and used tweezers and the x-acto knife to pull off the necessary pieces.

Once finished, he ironed it all again, just to be sure.  You have to be careful with it, because if you don't iron it enough, the bleach will bleed under the stencil.  But, if you iron it too much, then it can be hard to get all of the paper pulled off when you're done.  Brandon has had more luck with it than I have, but we're still not sure about how to get it exactly right every time.

As you can see, we used emptied boxes from the pantry as cardboard shields to protect the rest of the shirt, and taped it all together with masking tape.  The bleach solution is just a 50/50 mix of bleach and water in a little spray bottle.  (We had the most success with one of the little ones from the travel supply section at Target.)  I didn't take and pictures of the actual bleaching process, because we did that step together.  Usually, he would mist the bleach solution over the stencil, and I would dab at it with a paper towel to soak up the excess.  Sometimes, we used the iron to speed the process, but it can cause it to look a bit uneven.  When we're satisfied with how it looks, we pull off all of the cardboard and submerge the shirt in cold water to stop the bleaching process.  Then, and only then, do we get to pull off the stencil and see how the shirt looks.

Matt's shirt is the only one that Brandon did that bled, but it wasn't too bad.  We considered trying to add to it, but ran out of time decided that it might be best to just leave it as it is.

He liked it so much that he wore it on his honeymoon last week.  (Thanks for the picture, Robin!)

John's shirt, on the other hand, turned out perfectly.  They all play video games together, so Brandon chose a design from the game  Team Fortress 2.   The players are all split into two teams, the RED and the BLU, and then they run around trying to kill each other, among other things.  I played with both in Photoshop, but went with the BLU logo, because it was less complicated than the logo for the RED team.

We used the same process for this one, except that we cut the stencil completely apart before ironing it onto the shirt.  The result was much more crisp.

Win.

More from the series on Saturday!

July 16 Edit: as requested by Clint in the comments, here is the stencil I used for the Blu logo.  The lines aren't remotely perfect, but I corrected it when I was tracing the stencil.  The globe is the worst.  Rather than trying to trace that mess, I simply drew in those lines by hand.

Blogathon Winner!

Remember these?  They need homes.  Well, one of them needs a home.  The other one has a home, we just don't know which is which yet.  So I suppose I ought to get on with announcing the winner.  Can I get a drum roll  please?  And the winner is.....

Commenter number 2!  Wait, that doesn't help much.  Who was number 2 again?

Oh, right!  It was Kelly!  Congratulations, Kelly!  And you even mentioned in your comment which pair you'd like.  So, I will be getting in touch with you soon to get your address, so that I can send you your lovely emerald earrings.  :)

Thanks to everyone who entered!

5 Year Blogathon and Giveaway

Would you believe that it's been 5 years--five!--since I started sharing my crafty things here?  This blog started out as a way to share things with my family when we were living overseas, but look how it's changed!  Now it's a crafting blog only, and the family stuff has its own home elsewhere.  And it is not only my five year blogiversary, either.  I added crafting to my blog right around the same time that the other ladies at the arts and crafts shop (in Germany) started theirs, so it's been 5 years for all of us.  To celebrate, we're all doing giveaways, and you, my lucky readers, get to enter all of them!  

The give-away train begins today, March 10, and runs through March 16.  Winners will be announced on March 17 (which also happens to be St Patrick's Day).  Here are the rules for my giveaway:  To enter, you must answer this question:

What's your favorite St Patrick's Day tradition?

Post your answer in the comments by 10pm on March 16, and please make sure to include your name and e-mail address so that I can get in touch with you if you win.  (Only one entry per person, please.  Any duplicate entries will be skipped.)  I will randomly select a winner and post the results on the 17th.

Now, on to the prize!  I had a hard time choosing what to put up for grabs.  Remember my "hypothetical giveaway" question?  Totally not hypothetical.  Thanks to everyone who responded, I needed the ideas!   "Sparkly" and "earrings" sounded good to me, especially since I'd just gotten done making Robin's bridal set, so that's what I went with.  My winner will get to choose between two pairs of green cluster drop earrings.  Here is option #1:

And here is option #2:

The olive pair is a bit longer than the emerald pair, but not by much.  Total length is about an inch to an inch-and-a-half.  Both are a bit on the heavy side, because they're made with a lot of Swarovski crystals, but they're not heavy enough to be uncomfortable.

I love them both, and honestly, I kind of want to keep them for myself, but I promise, I won't.  :)  Anyway, I'm not sure where you started on this crazy train, but here are all of my fellow bloggers, just in case, just click the picture to hop over to their blogs:

and you are currently here, at The Green World!  You also ought to stop by my shop, to check out my spring sale, which also ends on St Patrick's Day.

Thanks for stopping by, and good luck!

Spring Sale!

I am taking a 2 week break, but rather than closing the shop during that time, I am celebrating spring by putting everything on sale, all the way through St Patrick's Day!  Click here to visit the shop, then enter the code SPRING20 at checkout to receive 20% off on purchases of $20 or more.  Just remember, all purchases made between now and March 17 will NOT be processed or shipped until March 18.  

What would you want?

Let's say, hypothetically, that I was going to do a give-away sometime in the near future.  If you got to choose the item, what would you want to win in this completely hypothetical give-away?

Kindle Cover

Brandon won a new Kindle at the Christmas party in December, and I knew immediately that I would need to get him a Kindle cover for Christmas.  But, I couldn't find any that I liked at a reasonable price.  Seriously, there are covers out there that are nearly as expensive as the Kindle itself!  So I decided to make one.  After all, how hard could it be? I found this tutorial on Pinterest and tried adapting it to open horizontally and include a magnetic closure.  

Well, it was harder than I thought.  I used an upholstery pleather for the outside, suede cloth for the inside, and auto headlining to cushion it, all over a book board base.  It took three attempts to achieve the above cover, and it was still not right.

The elastic straps were too small to hold the Kindle in place; it would hold either the top or the bottom, but not both, and it kept just falling out. It also wouldn't close properly, which made me a little nuts.  I'm not sure if I made the right edge too short, or if the magnet placement was off.  It was probably a little of both.  Anyway, I ran out of time, and this is the cover that I gave to Brandon for Christmas.  I told him right off that I would be redoing it, because it wasn't good enough.

This is the fourth attempt, and while it still isn't perfect, it is a vast improvement.  I did away with the top flap and magnetic closure completely, so that it just opens like a book.  I also skipped the narrow piece of book board in the middle, so that the "binding" flexes easily.  I made the elastic straps a lot longer, and brought them in farther, so that the Kindle now stays in place without any problems.