Freezer Paper Stenciled T-Shirt

I found cute little boy t-shirts for $4.00 at Target this week. The colors are adorable and they don't have a pocket (I like this because there's more you can do with them. The $3.00 Garanimals shirts at Wal-Mart have a pocket that sometimes gets in the way).

My friend Hannah found a really cute, simple T at Carter's for her little boy earlier this summer. It had a navy alligator chomping across the bottom of a bright green shirt. After finding the perfect t-shirt, I started searching the web for simple clip art images that would be easy to cut out of freezer paper.

I found a great website! It's called "Fun Fonix" and the creator has drawn these super cute, simple, black and white pictures for each letter of the alphabet, I'm assuming they're intended for flash cards to help kids learn to read. They are free for personal use-you can right click and copy then resize in a program like Microsoft Word. She did ask that these only be used for personal projects and not saved or sold.

What You Need:
Freezer paper
some kind of design (your own or clip art)
exacto knife
cutting board
foam brush
fabric paint (I like Tulip Matte, Soft Touch)
iron, ironing board

Tape freezer paper (shiny side down) over your design on a cutting board and  start "exacto knifing." With a line drawing like this, just be sure not to cut out the important parts. Here, it would have been really easy to snip off the tooth outline piece.

Here it is fully cut out, you're left with a measly little pile of scraps that does not accurately reflect the amount of work involved in cutting out this design. I'm kidding, it doesn't take too long. The fact that most of the shapes were geometric rather than curved was a big help.

Iron it on, shiny side down! Turn heat to medium and don't use steam, I did that last time and had some "bleedage." Dab on your Tulip Soft Touch fabric paint with a foam brush. Peel off the stencil before the paint dries.

I think the used, painted stencil looks so cool, makes me sad that I can't use it again. After the paint is dry, cover the design with some cotton scrap cloth and iron over your design to 'heat set' the paint.

I'm happy with how  it turned out! I will be raiding the "Fun Fonix" site again for stencils!

With a little pair of madras shorts? And yes, my baby is chewing on an emery board.