It's been a couple years since I made a Fourth of July T-shirt. This year I decided to go all out. You see, my kids have been complaining that summer hasn't felt very summer-y, because we haven't gone to the pool, or the splash pad, or camping in the mountains. We haven't had a fire, or slept out on the trampoline, or any of those usual summer things.....why? Because I'm pregnant. And I'm tired. And it takes a lot of energy to six kids and all the stuff that goes with them to any of the above mentioned activities. They are doing swim team, and swim lessons, and tennis, and tball and baseball and ballroom dance camp.....so it's not like we're doing NOTHING. Buuuuuuut it sorta feels like it. I totally get it.
So, my kids have been complaining about a lack of fun summer activities. I had the idea today, that we should make Fourth of July shirts together. I'd seen a youtube video awhile back about making DIY shirts using freezer paper and bleach spray, and I'd been itching to try it. And since I don't fit into practically any of the clothes that I own right now, I was in the market for a Fourth of July shirt anyway. And so were almost all of my kids. We ran to Walmart, I let them each pick out what color shirt they wanted (Walmart's blank Ts are like $3/$4 bucks.....not a bad deal. Especially when you have to buy 7 of them. (Aaron didn't want one.)
Walmart took wayyyyy longer than I thought. So by the tie we got home it was already 4pm. We threw the shirts in the quick cycle laundry (because you have to wash them first), and while we waited we looked up different ideas for designs we could print out on the computer. The idea is that you can trace your design onto freezer paper, cut the design out with a razor blade, iron it onto the shirt, and then mix 1-1 bleach and water in a spray bottle, spray lightly over your design, blot with a paper towel, then wait about 10 minutes. The parts of the shirt not covered by the freezer paper will lighten. Once the shirt is dry, you pull the freezer paper off (what's underneath will still be the original color of the shirt), rinse thoroughly in cold water to remove the rest of the bleach, then wash and dry like normal to "set" the colors. Sounds easy enough.
Well, I didn't have freezer paper, I had wax paper.....and it turns our those two things are NOT one and the same in this instance. The kids had all picked out these elaborate designs, we'd traced them, cut them out, and no matter how hard we tried with the iron, they would not stick to the shirts. I started to panic just slightly at that point, because I'd promised the kids these awesome shirts, and we'd already spent a ton of time on them and now it wasn't working! Agghhhh! So, instead we tried masking tape and star stickers and alphabet stickers. I told the kids we'd have to simplify the designs a little to only things that could be made out of tape and stickers. I thought they'd be disappointed, but you know what? They stepped up to the plate and handled it alike champs. They got super creative with their designs and shaping things out of tape. And I feel like they even had a little more ownership over the whole thing because they had to take charge instead of just printing something off the computer.
We set up the bleach spraying station outside on the deck. By this time Aaron was home, and he was a very good sport to jump right in and help. He loves me, even though I drag him in to all my hair-brained schemes. It was 11pm before we put the shirts in the washing machine. I'll have to take a picture of everyone wearing them tomorrow. But they turned out awesome.
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