Or freezer paper stenciling, anyway.
I've been wanting to try this craft project ever since reading about it in Amanda Soule's book, The Creative Family. I started hitting up the thrift stores and collected a few plain t-shirts, found freezer paper at the grocery store, and bought some decent fabric pant. And then, it sat and sat, because for some reason, I actually thought this would be hard. Boy, was I wrong.
The boys and I sat at the computer and picked out some images-- a jet plane for Max, a really cool owl in flight for Noah. I saved them to my computer and then, using photo-editing software (I used Picnik-- free-- online), I blew the image up by 300-percent and printed it out.
We taped the printed image onto our glass sliding door and then taped the freezer paper on top. We traced the silhouette of the image onto the freezer paper (if you want to draw your own image, you can skip all the above and just draw directly onto the freezer paper).
I helped the boys by cutting out the traced image using an exact-o knife, and then ironed it onto the shirt (I also put another blank piece of freezer paper inside the shirts to avoid the paint seeping through).
Once the freezer paper was ironed on-- I moved the iron across it for about half a minute-- you can tell when it is secure-- I turned the project back over to the boys. Using basic paint brushes and some fabric paint, they painted in the area that was cut out until it was well covered (beware-- after a first coat, specks of unpainted fabric appeared, especially along the freezer paper's edge). We then let it dry overnight, and the next morning, simply peeled the freezer paper off...and it was done! So cool. So easy. So just in time for the holiday season (because let's face it:: my knitting is not going to be gift worthy until, um, 2020)...
