Custom T-shirt Painting

I am going on the Disney Cruise this summer with my 6 person family, so my mom thought it would be neat if we made our own T-shirts for "pirate night."  Pirate Night is one night on the cruise when everybody dresses as a pirate, so we thought we would make our own costumes.  Because it is the Disney Cruise, we tried to find a design that incorporated Mickey and as you can see in the picture, we found the perfect design.  Painting on T-shirts by this method is easy and it requires no special skill.

The materials you will need are any color fabric paint, a plain T-shirt, Reynolds freezer paper, an iron, and a paint brush.  You basically have to print out the design of your choice onto the freezer paper and cut out the design so it is like a stencil (look at the second picture and you'll see what I mean).  Then you iron the paper onto the shirt and paint the design.  You may need to do multiple layers of paint for the best outcome.  To speed up the process of drying the paint, we used a hair dryer between coats which definitely saved time.

By using this painting method, you can make custom uniforms, shirts for a party, shirts for a 5k, and even shirts that are machine washable!  Plus, it is much more fun to paint your own shirts with your friends than pay much more money and wait for them to come in the mail.

Another reason these T-shirts are awesome is because you can select any color for both the tee and for the paint, making your imagination the limit for what you can design.  You can even make a shirt for your favorite sports team for a fraction of the price it would cost online or in a merchandise store.

Don't get stuck spending way more money than you should be on making custom shirts, and just do them this way!  I hope you liked my instructable, and if you have and questions or comments, please post them below.  Thanks!

-Doctordv