Hail to the Chief

I love getting inspiration for boy-oriented projects. I have three little boys at home. Add on top of that one not-so-little boy and I'm completely outnumbered. And as good of a sport Jeremy is at saying "yes those ruffle bum onesies are soooo adorable" he really can appreciate a boy-directed craft with more natural enthusiasm.

And so it was with great enthusiasm that I ran last year into these two blogs running simultaneous month-long blogging events focused entirely on boy projects.




Luckily they are at it again and I've been enjoying checking out their postings everyday, all in celebration of: 




One of the projects I loved but saw too late last year was President's Day T-shirts.  I didn't let the opportunity pass us by again--Saterday we were out at Hobby Lobby picking up blank t-shirts (and some copper-colored fabric paint).

Working on projects with little ones is always crazy.  Basically Jeremy and I worked on making the freezer paper stencils, and we actually tried out cutting the paper into 8.5x11 sheets and sending them through the printer with a reasonable amount of success. We cut em out and ironed them to the shirts and helped the boys paint them. 

And you can see that someone ended up with a smudge on their shirt because they couldn't wait patiently for help and opened a paint bottle which squirted across the table.   Oh well, natural consequences eh?  And they turned out pretty well despite it. 

The black one is mine then going clockwise there's Jeremy's, Owen's, and the Washington profile belongs to Jonas. 

We used some dimensional paint on Owen's.  He did like that though he still wanted his to have an eye.  Can't win 'em all.

I wasn't sure how well the penny details would come out on mine, but I like how it ended up.  My favorite thing about it though is the sparkly metallic copper paint--I am still a girl after all.

Happy President's Day!

Freezer Paper Stencils

Yesterday was pink day.  For the last two weeks in Kindergarten they have been reviewing colors with the new students and so they invited the children to wear clothing according to the color of the day.  So, yesterday was pink day.  Owen doesn't own any pink clothing.    So we decided to get creative.

I've wanted to try freezer paper stencils for a long time.  I even had a roll of freezer paper back on my craft desk just waiting for my first project.  Jeremy took creative lead on this.  It's always his job to make sure my projects for the boys aren't too girly.

"Artsy" they may be--we're ok with that--but "girly" is right out. 

First create your design and cut it out.  Simple designs are always easier to start out with.  

 Center the stencil with the slick, shiny side down on the fabric.  And press quickly with a hot iron making sure the inner edges in particular are stuck. 

Paint the design.  We used screen-printing ink since we had it, but people use fabric paint, and even acrylic as well.  I stamped the paint on with a stencil brush.  If you are brushing your paint on always brush from on top of the stencil and over the edge towards the center of the design.  Don't brush from the middle of the design outwards or you'll push paint out under the edges of your stencil. 

Let dry completely and peel off stencil.

Wear with pride.

And a happy pink day to you.