Welcome to camp week!
Secretly we both wanted to be camp counselors as teens, so we thought there would be no better time than the present to fulfill our dream. This week you will learn how to create fabulous wearables (lots of them from supplies you can find in your scrapbooking stash) that can be created either at or for camp, whether it's a family camp, a church or community camp, or even a huge family reunion. So put on your camp shirt and let's get started!
Wait, you say, you don't have a camp shirt? We will have to do something about that. Find a nice clean t-shirt and try out one of these techniques that go way beyond tie-dye.
Most of the time, mustard stains on a shirt are something to avoid, but in this case, the bright yellow condiment is perfect as fabric paint. Angie used vinyl letters she cut out with her QuicKutz Revolution as masks on her t-shirt. After slipping a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to protect the back, Angie adhered the letters to her shirt and used a foam brush to paint over the letters with good old French's. After the mustard was dry, she removed the vinyl cutouts and washed her t-shirt. A few Bead Dazzle iron-on flowers from SEI (only $1.99!) complete the cheerful design. (And, no. She does not smell like a hotdog when she wears the shirt!)
Before committing her design to the lovely, bright-white tee above, Angie tested the mustard technique on the old scrap of white fabric below. She cut two letter "A's" out of vinyl, out of adhesive cardstock, and out of regular cardstock. As you can see, all of the materials worked about equally well as masks, although the vinyl (topmost image) was a bit easier to reposition and remove—and it was far less absorbent.
If you aren't in the mood for condiments, try melting crayons onto your shirt instead!
Kelly let her kids try out this technique that is usually used to make stained-glass designs on waxed paper. Find all your old crayon stubs and peel off the wrappers. Use a simple pencil sharpener to make a collection of wax shavings from your crayons (use a muffin tin to separate black shavings from red). Put a sheet of chipboard or cardboard inside your shirt to keep colors from bleeding through. Place your shirt on a table and sprinkle shavings in any pattern you like. You could use a marker to make an outline of your shape if you need a guideline. When you like how it looks, place a sheet of waxed paper or freezer paper on top of your design and press with a hot iron (no steam) for about 30 seconds. Let your shirt cool a bit and then peel the paper off. When you wash the shirt (in cold, please) some of the wax may flake off, but the dye from the crayons will remain.
Kelly helped 2-year-old Gabe design a colorful, lowercase "g" on his little shirt.
Josie, age 5, opted for a cupcake design.
And finally Luke, age 7, turned his crayon shavings into a convincing (and slightly menacing) fish.
Tune in tomorrow for DIY necklace charms that use up all those paper and fabric scraps you've been saving.
Until then, Kumbayah, our friends!
p.s. Unlike most of the rest of the Write.Click.Scrapbook. team, we (Angie and Kelly) enjoy the great fortune of living just 15 minutes from each other in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, making it easy to get together for co-blogging fun! We actually met 13 years ago while working in the Writing Center at Utah State University, and we've remained close (geographically and otherwise) ever since.
