Grand opening of Tiki's DIYary!!! ^-^...today : ~~ Hand-painting a color lined Shirt ~~

So here's the first CRAFTY POST I'm sending out. =D
I'm really excited to publish this! ^-^

Actually it's nothing special for you Readers, but since I'm new to the Blogworld, and still got a lot to learn, this Project - or more precisely: its documentation - took me a lot of work and time.
The making of the shirt itself, took only a few hours (plus drying time), but it was a long road to the point I'm writing this. Exams in college and the start of a new semester afterwards kinda got me stuck in a whole lot of other things to do than blogging. :/
But as I tried to introduce in the latest post on the whole idea of that DIYary section here, I'm gonna just try to go through the making of that crafty stuff here, documenting what happened, and maybe shouldn't have happened. You can re-craft this, or improve the idea for your own needs, learn from my mistakes, or just scroll through the pictures and think what a fool I am thinking this would be interesting at all...
whatever you like - hope you enjoy it.
And please feel free to leave critical comments...;)

BEFORE         -            AFTER

For the design I roughly played around on Photoshop to get an idea.
I saved pics of basic shirts from the H&M online shop before, so I can
digitally paint over them to try out how designs will look in the end  and how big I should make them.
This was the 5-minutes messy sketch I made for this graphical top.

Here's the raw materials I used. 

• a plain white cotton shirt from our favourite swedish fashion empire;)  
  (I love these, because they're incredibly cheap (about 5€), available in various colors and - which is crucial for me personally - long enough!)

Of course every other shirt will do. But be sure it is 100% cotton or linen or other natural fabric. I experienced that the paint doesn't stay well on synthetic fiber like polyester or something like that. That is true even for mixed textiles, that contain just about 5% spandex, like a lot of basic shirts unfortunately do. Another point is, that you need to iron the fabric with maximum heat to fixate. Some materials get ruined by that.
 So just check the label before you start.

• self-adhesive book foil        (it's my first try working with this foil as stencil material. It's simply that transparent stuff you can wrap around your study books or something, to protect them from dirt, liquid, scratches and co. You'll find it in any stationary store or supermarket)
• textile paint (I like Javana Tex or Marabu, which are both similar in prices and I never made bad experience with those. They're available in almost every arts or hobby supplies shop)
• two simple brushes - 1 bristle brush (for tapping the paint onto the stencil) and 1 thin brush (for the manual corrections afterwards)
• scissors & cutting knife (crafting scalpel)
• cutting mat
• triangle ruler (suggesting a big one - 30cm)
• big sheet of cardboard (cut to size, that fits inside the shirt - covering all the area you want to paint)
• ball-pen or pencil
• a sheet of backing paper
• flat iron

To prevent the paint from going through the thin fabric onto the backside of the shirt when applying it (had that a few unwary times - really annoying! ; ),  I took the cardboard and shoved it in between the fabric layers.
That's my standard cut of "Finnpappe" (a special kind of cardboard material usually taken for architecture modelling - we use it in college a lot) that I take for every shirt project. It's getting a more and more artistic look from all the paint drips and smears it's covered with; ).
It measures about 44 x 34 cm. I cut the edges round, because it's easier to slide it into the shirts then.
I suggest not to take a too even and slicky surfaced material, e.g. not plastic, foil or metal or so. The paint won't be absorbed by the material like it does in porous ones and could spread underneath the fabric and be re-soaked by it ruining your accurately painted edges and shapes.

Now having the foil cut to an accurate size, I tried to make it lay even. (Later I figured, that I should have unrolled it earlier and press it in straight shape, because it kept curling up all the time, which wasn't very helpful...

Luckily these book foils have a grid, which was perfect for sketching the graphical design I wanted to make.

But there was the first challenge. When outlining the pattern I kinda got confused which ares would later be painted and which were to stay white, because all were just lines with the same space between them. So I had to erase a lot... stupid me!

The simple solution would've been what I did just a few mounds of eraser-crumbs later: filling the stripes.... ; P

I also realized, that the originally outlined pattern was only working with equal white-space, because it was all freehand drawn in Photoshop and the lines didn't have all the same thickness. Transferred to the grid made that clear. So I couldn't fit all color stripes planned onto the sheet.
That's why the sketch had more stripes on the right.
I guess here's proof again for the quote my former trainee teacher (while doing an internship at a carpentry) kept saying:

"Even with the tiniest detail: better do it accurate and neat from the start - it'll go out of shape in the end all by itself, anyways..." ; )

Now to the cutting! Simple... But just a little warning when you work on slippery foil: you might wanna press the ruler a little harder than usually, else it'll slip aside while making a fast cut...which leads to a curved line you didn't want.
As for me...that happened (almost) three times... v_v''

Here's the reason why I wrote earlier, that I definately should've evened the foil before starting... Ended up with quite a mess of ready cut paper-bundle that was a pain in the a** to re-assemble.

But with a little help of color pots it still worked...

...because it was going to be affixed to the fabric anyways.
To have it all on the right place in the end, I started by removing the protection film only on the edges by fixing and holding one point where I wanted it and then...

...carefully stripping off the paper.

Fixing only the corners first allowed careful adjustment.

Just tear off the edges and leave the rest of the paper.

Here the straight aligned corners.

Time to cut away unneeded foil.

That's the result.

Then I removed the rest of the protection paper and pressed everything onto the fabric again so that there are no gaps left under the foil, where paint could go under it.

Finnally! Paint comes to action!...yay! ^-^

Starting with greeeen (fluorescent this is! =D) I flecked nearly vertical onto the fabric using a bristle brush. You could also use a special stencil sponge brush or something. But I always felt these suck up too much paint, that stays lost inside them and is therefore wasted.

For a little variation I mixed yellow and fluorescent green to my favourite lime color!^-^
(Friends and family already started referring to that lime, yellowish kind of green as "Tiki-green", because I have it all over my place at home (see this earlier post about Color-Quest in my apartment for more; ).
Having a trademark-color makes me kinda proud I must admit. ;P

Blue with fluo-green also made quite a nice turquoise hue.

Tapping color onto the shirt is really fun and also fast. I made sure to check if the foil was fixed well before applying a new color.

What do you think of the palette?

Oh No! Here's what happens when getting into painting-rush... =(
A drip where it didn't belong.. Damn it!

That's why you gotta be careful, even if most of the fabric is covered. Having a bright color like this red at a place where it shouldn't be is not very nice... Tried to wipe it up with a wet tissue...

...with little success. ;(

So I tried covering it up with a thick layer of green.

This is the intermediate ready stage. I let it dry for a few hours.
When impatience is one of your mind's features, as it is in mine...you can take a blow-drier to speedup that step.

The hues i mixed in those small plastic shot glasses were quite nice, so I sealed them with kitchen wrap to prevent drying out.

After some waiting the foil was quite easy to strip off.

And this is how it looked. ^-^
Finished you think?...Not if one is meticulous about crafting as I must admit to be...most of the time.

First thing to revise: the damn dripping accident I had... Turned out even the thick layer of paint couldn't really cover it up. =/

So I gave it another try.

Second adjustment: finish the lines that needed to be longer than the stencil could reach out manually.

Since stencil edges never turn out accurate enough for me to be fully content, I outlined them manually again, too.
Guess it's a matter of argument, weather this is necessary or not. ; )

In this particular case I think it definitely was necessary.

Even from a little further afar the edges looked a little wavy.

Third adjustment: Stripes that didn't reach to the sides.

Especially the left side was bothering me. For the foil had a width of only about 40cm I couldn't cover the whole shirt. So the thin brush was called into another action.

All stripes corrected! ^-^
Unfortunately some paint did go under the foil despite every effort, so there were a few flecks left.

After another drying phase the shirt as ready to be ironed.
Though the paint is strong enough to not be washed away completely without that step, it's crucial to fixate it! The colors will stay neatly in place and I never had any of it transferred to other items in the washing machine.

This is a sheet of simple backing paper (usually these are brown, but this was incidentally a bleached package.
Never bring the iron in direct contact to the paint! - makes a mess!

I set the heat to maximum (3 points in this case) turned off the steam - dry ironing works way better to fixate - and worked over the whole thing a few minutes.
 Instructions on the color pots usually suggest ironing for 1minute. But since you're sliding over everything it needs more time to sum that minute of contact with the heat all together.

Et voilá enfin!... =)

Thank you sooo much for scrolling down till this point! ; )

I had fun doing this first DIY post and

really hope you enjoyed! 
^-^//

Please leave a comment or critique if you like!
I appreciate every incentive and suggestions!