Today we tried painting the koi stencils onto one of the t-shirts, and were generally successful. We used Amy's suggestion of putting another piece of freezer paper behind the stencil to keep it stable and to prevent the paint from going through. That seemed to work nicely. I wasn't sure when to remove the top freezer paper, should I take it off right away, or let the paint completely dry first? I decided to let it dry a little and then remove the freezer paper. This seemed to work ok. One note though, do not remove the back freezer paper until the paint is completely dry or it can do weird things to the front design, like the little line to the right of the koi's eye in the second photo below.
Above is Max carefully painting on the stencil. Below is the mostly finished t-shirt, this one's for Grandpa. I wanted to have Max sign it, and I was going to print "Children's Day 2007" around the koi, but the only fabric marker I have is red and that disappears into the navy blue. I could get a lighter color pen, but I suspect that all will just disappear too, so perhaps this t-shirt is done...
I'm glad we got a chance to test this out before just doing it as an activity. The painting used a lot more paint than I thought it would, so I wouldn't have had enough for everyone to paint their shirts.
The stencil is here (467.5K), if you'd like to use it (personal, non-commercial use only). I printed it so the longest dimension was about 9.5 or 10 inches, this fills the front of a child-sized t-shirt. About 7 inches across is good for babies' onesies. I printed these directly onto freezer paper, but you can also print onto plain paper and tape that over the freezer paper while cutting the two together.
oh, i love how the stencil came out....a very nice and simple design, and max did a very good job with painting!
Posted by: debbie | Sunday, 06 May 2007 at 10:19 PM
they turned out TERRIFIC!!! wow. what kind of paint did you use? really need to try that. and the snow?! in may?!!! what the...
Posted by: heidi | Monday, 07 May 2007 at 07:13 AM
Wow! That looks awesome! As for the signature a metallic silver fabric pen would look really cool.
Snow? Wow.
Posted by: Sharly | Monday, 07 May 2007 at 09:10 AM
Wow! It came out awesome!
Posted by: myra | Monday, 07 May 2007 at 05:35 PM
Totally gorgeous!!
Snow? I though we had it bad here in Minnesota!!!
Posted by: nuttnbunny | Monday, 07 May 2007 at 06:07 PM
Those look great, I love the colors. Hope the party was lots of fun!
Posted by: Donna | Monday, 07 May 2007 at 06:28 PM
thank you for sharing all of these delicious details. I am now planning my own Children's Day Party and this t-shirt painting idea is great.
Posted by: Alisa | Tuesday, 13 April 2010 at 05:51 AM