Introduction: Bleach Spritz Clothing

About: the adventure continues

Renewing my all-too-brief love affair with bleaching my own designs into clothing

Step 1: What This Is

This is a really simple way of putting text or other designs onto a T-Shirt. It takes about 1 minute, once you have all the materials. Basically, I put bleach into a perfume spritz bottle, spelled things out with magnetic refridgerator letters, and then spritzed over them onto a dark thrift store shirt. It works really well--Check it out!

enjoy,
alex
http://www.artiswrong.com

Step 2: Get Your Stuff

You need:
Bleach. Get it from any market/gas station/convenience store. Costs about $2
A dark cotton T-shirt. Support your local thrift store. Costs about 20 cents
A cheap perfume spritz bottle. The finer the spray, the better. $1 from Jax, a cheap retail outletish thing. I went for the JOOP variety of perfume. It smelled like joop.

Magnetic fridge letters. About $7 from your favorite toy store. Go Stellabella toys!

Step 3: Bleach=perfume

Pour the perfume into the neighbors' backyard, or douse yourself in it. Refill the bottle with bleach, and put the cap back on.
It's probably a good idea to label the bottle, since even if you're smart enough to remember that it now is full of death-and burning liquid, rather than the original, more benign foul-smelling liquid, your friends/husband/dog/cousin you keep locked in the attic probably will mistakenly perfume themselves with bleach at some point. Bleach is a really good perfume, in that a really small amount will make you smell like it for days.

Step 4: Send Your Message to the World!

This is a good outside project. That way you don't have to worry about bleaching the hardwood floors your landlord is sooooo proud of and would whack you over the head with a cattle prod if you mess them up.
(I wish I had thought about that before etching circuit boards. EIT!)

Anyway, put on your best collection of punk covers of the song "Hole in my heart(all the way to china)" by Cyndi Lauper and spread your shirt out flat on the ground.

Spell something out on your shirt with the refridgerator letters. Alternatively, put something cool on your shirt, like a buzzsaw or chains and sprockets or your neighbor.

Now, spritz that bleach like you were born to do it!

You don't need much--don't soak the fabric, but just get bleach all around the letters. It starts changing color instantly--it's magic!

Step 5: Finish Up

Let the shirt sit for a minute or two, to make sure the bleach can fully destroy the color (how does bleach suck color out of stuff? Isn't that absolutely terrifying?)
Then, take the letters off, being careful not to smear any bleach, and rinse the shirt in a sink for a minute or so, kneading it. Rinse it until the water running off the shirt is clear.

Now, put your shirt out into the sun to dry.
Go take a shower--it's a hot day.
The shirt will be dry by the time you get out.
It it's not, take another shower. Or write an instructable or something.

By now, it's about 2 in the afternoon--time to get to work. Put on your creation, and go dazzle your friends with your artistic ability!

happy shirting!
alex
http://www.artiswrong.com