Photographic Proof.

Somehow my brain lost a week and I was convinced that Valentine's Day was today.  I have at least four more Valentine's ideas to share with you, so I was panicked yesterday... until my husband told me to calm the heck down because I had a whole other week.  Phew!


I wanted to share this super easy apparel idea today... I know you've seen this idea around blogland before, but I tried my hand at it and thought I'd show you the result.


I bring you the:

I started with some cheap clothes from Walmart - they were on sale for $3 each, so I'm thinking I couldn't make them that cheap.  If you want to make a shirt that's the same style as mine, I will direct you to this 90 Minute Shirt tutorial from MADE.  Awesome.  (Though 90 minutes by normal standards means it would take me approximately 270 minutes...)

I really like the look of the scribbly holiday-themed graphics - like the scribble trees for Christmas and scribbly hearts for Valentine's day.  To reproduce that look I used:
my store bought shirt and pants
heart shapes printed on card stock (small ones for the pants and a big huge one for the shirt)
an exacto knife
Clorox Bleach Pen
Scrap Cardboard

Cut your stencils out using the exacto knife.  I actually decided to only cut a few of the smaller heart and then keep reusing them in different spots.

Place your scrap cardboard inside your shirt/pants.  You don't want your bleach leaking through and making spots on the back.

Lay your stencil out.  I placed mine in the middle of my shirt, slightly more towards the top, and angled the top of the heart to the left.

Use the large end of the bleach pen to "scribble" in a wavy line back and forth across the heart, from the top to the bottom while holding your stencil down in place with your other hand.

Do the same thing on the pants with the smaller stencil, but use the small end of the pen.  Move your heart stencils all around the pants in a random pattern.

Let this sit for a little while.  Once it starts to set into the fabric, take the small end of the bleach pen and follow the outline already slightly starting to show to add more scribbles in a finer point.

Once you let it sit for about 15-20 minutes, you can rinse the bleach out in cold water.  I was going for a really subtle look, but it seemed a little too subtle for me - especially the pants.  (This picture make the heart look much more pronounced than it really was.  It was not nearly as noticeable as this.)

Here's a closer look at the pants.  You can just BARELY make out some of the hearts.

Put the clothes in the washer on a short cycle and then dry according to instructions.  Here's how they looked when that was done.  Again, in the picture, they actually don't look nearly as subtle as they actually were.

So I decided to go over it one more time with the small end of the bleach pen.  I did this with the pants AND shirt.  Let it sit for about 15-20 minutes.

Then, wash and dry according to instructions.  After all was said and done, I think I really like the coloring of the shirt, but I wish it looked just a little more "sketchy".  For my first time playing with a bleach pen, I think it was a success!

And, just to prove that she doesn't ALWAYS scream and cry when I take her picture:

For the record, the shirt and pants were never meant to be worn together, I just couldn't resist the stripe-y pants and decided to alter both for Valentine's Day.  The pants are still INCREDIBLY light.  Like you can barely see the hearts and in some spots it just looks like a white blotch accident.  She'll probably still wear them, though.  I don't really know why the finished result was so different on the shirt compared to the pants... Something to do with the starting colors?

In any case, I'd say the shirt is a success.  mini will be stylin' this Feb. 14th!

*Be sure to check the right sidebar for all the fun parties I link to!