Domestic Randomness: DIY How to make Dude Family Shirts

I am so excited to be sharing this with you! I made this for Mr. Random for Christmas (I can't share his presents with you until after the holiday because Mr. Random does read my blog, I love you sweetie and I love that you read my blog!). Anyways, I am glad to finally be sharing this with you. When I told Mr. Random that I had to get part of his gift at Michael's and my super crafty, scrap booking, Stampin' Up selling aunt was helping me with it he couldn't imagine that I would be giving him anything he would actually want. But of course he was wrong, he loved these! As did everyone else we showed them too. And who couldn't love them? They are soooo cute! So here are directions to make your very own Dude shirts. Oh, and if you don't want to make your own check out my etsy shop, it is posted there too! Anyways, here they are:

DIY How to make Dude Family Shirts

I was inspired by this etsy item. It looks to me like it is screen printed. I looked into screen printing but it seemed like too much of an investment. So I decided to make it with fabric paint since I had all the needed supplies, I just had to buy the shirts.

Supplies:
Shirts for each person you are making one for
Fabric Paint
Full Sheet stickers
Foam paint brush
Something for cutting out the letters (I used a cricut machine)
Extra shirt/fabric you don't mind ruining
Cardboard (big enough to sit inside the shirt and cover the whole design, I cut up a diaper box)

Directions:

Cut your cardboard to the right size. This is the one I used for the onesie, I had a different size for the adult shirts.

Gather your supplies. I actually did not use the shown shirt from Michael's because I found what I was looking for at a thrift shop. I managed to get Mr. Random's shirt for $.50 at a Good Will 1/2 off sale. I already had the onesie for little man, had gotten it at a garage sale, it probably cost me $.50 or less. My shirt was the most expensive, I got it at another thrift shop for $3.50. I had gotten the above shirt from Michael's for $2.50 but then found the shirt I used (I wanted a fitted shirt but didn't want to pay Michael's price) and decided to go with that. If you take some time and haunt the t-shirt bins at thrift shops sometimes you can find what you need, but this does take some time and changing of standards because it is pretty rare to find a blank white shirt in the t-shirt bin. But check the shirt racks too, sometimes you can hit the jackpot there.

These are the colors of paint I used. All of the dudes were in navy blue. The big was in royal blue. The little was made by mixing royal blue and white. The mrs was made by mixing deep red and white.

This is the t-shirt I didn't mind ruining. It was nice to get an idea of what things would look like on t-shirt material. I wanted to test the stickers to make sure that they would give me the effect I wanted (they did!) and I tested the colors I was mixing to see how they looked with the navy blue. It also helped me realize that I needed the cardboard in the t-shirt because fabric paint does leak through. If you are super confident in your abilities with fabric paint feel free to skip this step.

Cut the words out of sticker paper. Sorry I didn't get a picture of this actual step, I wasn't even thinking about pictures then. I used a cricut machine to cut out the words and it worked awesome for this. I don't own a cricut, but I have an awesome aunt who owns one and let me use hers. If you don't own one or have an awesome crafty aunt/family member/friend who has one then you may be able to use a stencil and scalpel knife thing, but it will be a lot harder to get the words so precise. Maybe you can check at local schools, craft stores and such? They may have one that they'd let you use possibly for a fee. Or see if you can find your local Stampin' Up representative, they may have one or know someone who does who could let you use it. This would be a great way to make some crafty friends :)

Peel off the back of the sticker.

Position the word. This was the hard part. I used a measuring tape because I couldn't find my yard stick and tried to find the center of the word and the shirt and match them up. This is a lot harder than it looks. In the end I measured and then eyeballed it and called it good enough.

Press the sticker firmly against the cloth. This step is very important. make sure you trace all the way around each letter. If you don't get it stuck down well the paint will bleed under the sticker and your lines will be less precise.

Paint over the sticker. Make sure you don't paint over the outer edges of the sticker, it is very easy to get too close to the edge. I did a couple times. You can get most of it out with a baby wipe (keep them handy!) but you will still have a little of that color left.

Let it sit for a minute.

Peel off the sticker. I didn't wait until it was completely dry, I just let it sit for a minute then peeled the sticker up.

For the sticker in between letters I found that a fork worked best.

Doesn't it look great? Although you can see the small blue spot where I accidentally went over the edge. Repeat the above steps for each word for each shirt. If you are doing two words on the same shirt like these you need to wait for around 5-10 minutes before you apply the next sticker. After you peel off the last sticker you need to let it sit for 24 hours to completely set. I had to hide these laying out flat while they were drying so Mr. Random wouldn't see them before Christmas, that was fun :). We have washed these shirts several times and have not really had any problems. Little Man's paint has cracked a little bit along the creases but it still looks fine. The picture below was taken today and you can't see it at all.