Bleached T-Shirts Take 2....Now that's more like it!

Okay, so my first try didn't go as planned. But that's okay. Live and learn, right?
The second try was so much more what I had in mind.
The thing I love about this project is you don't need to have any fancy cutting machines or equipment.
And it's quick, easy, fun and inexpensive.
Perfect in my opinion!

Let me walk you through it.

Supplies:

• A colored T-shirt (Yellow doesn't work very well)
• Bleach
• Small Spray Bottle (a travel hairspray bottle worked perfectly)
• A design (I got mine from www.picmonkey.com )
• Clear or light colored contact paper
• Sharpie (permanent marker)
• Scissors
• Tape
• Plastic Bag
• Rubber Gloves (not mandatory but nice to have)
• Well ventilated area

I started by printing a design on regular paper and then taping it to a window.
I then taped a piece of clear contact paper over the top of the design with the vinyl side facing me.
I traced the design onto the contact paper.

In this picture the design was traced onto the paper not the vinyl but believe me it's a lot easier if you trace it onto the vinyl.

After the design was traced I simply cut it out with the scissors, peeled off the paper backing and placed it on the t-shirt where I wanted it.

I made sure I was wearing old clothes and shoes and moved the shirt outside where the bleach couldn't get on anything important.
However, I did not wear rubber gloves and my hands are paying the price.
Bleach is a VERY potent chemical and should be treated with respect. My hands have been cracking and bleeding since doing this craft with-out gloves. So don't do it!

Also, if you don't want the bleach to bleed through to the other side of the shirt put some plastic or an old towel between the front and back layers of the shirt.

Now comes the fun part!

With your spray bottle lightly squirt the bleach 4 or 5 times over your design.
And then wait a minute. The bleach won't look like it's doing anything for a minute but believe me it is.
Suddenly the bleached spots will show up.
Now you can decide if you want to bleach some more. If you do, spray a couple more times and then wait again.

Once you have the design the way you want it let it dry for a few minutes.
Then remove the vinyl, rinse in the sink in cold water and wash in the washing machine or dry in the dryer.

That's it!

This was a very easy, inexpensive and fun craft to do with the Young Women I work with.

And it really made me happy to see how excited they were about their creations!

Good luck and I'd love to hear if you decide to try it!!!

Bleached T-shirts....what NOT to do!

So I'm all about sharing my mistakes so you don't have to make them too.
I appreciate when others do the same for me.
In that spirit I'm sharing with you what NOT to do when making a T-shirt with a bleached out design.

We thought it would be fun to let our church Young Women's group decorate some t-shirts and we thought this would be an inexpensive, fun and cute way for them to do it.

I thought I should try it out before letting the girls loose with bleach.....and it turns out it was a good thing I did.

With this being a church activity I was very budget conscious. If you've seen the bleached t-shirts around the Internet most people have used their vinyl cutting machines to cut the designs. I do not have one and I didn't want to buy any. So, my brilliant idea was to print up some designs on cardstock and cut them out with an exacto knife.  I used Picmonkey for my designs.

Then I used spray adhesive on the cut-out designs and applied them to the t-shirt.
This is where I made my first mistake......can you see it by looking at the picture below?

Yep! I put the spray adhesive on the black printed side of the paper and then stuck it to the shirt.
If you look closely at the picture under this you can see the black that is now permanently a part of the shirt.

After you adhere your design to the shirt you spray with bleach. The bleach will change the color of the shirt around your design and then when you peel off the paper your shirt looks awesome!

Mistake two: I added water to the bleach in the spray bottle. This made the bleach spread and not speckle. I was going for the speckled look.

Mistake three and the most important one of all: When you spray the bleach you need to squirt it a couple of times and then wait and see what it does before you spray more.
I sprayed and thought, "It's not doing anything it needs more." So I sprayed more.....a lot more.....and then all of a sudden the whole thing was pink and not speckled purple with pink like I wanted.....

Mistake four: I didn't put anything between the front and back of the shirt to keep the bleach from soaking through to the back.
This is what it ended up looking like.

Not exactly what I was going for, but I think it's kind of cute in a sort of tie-dyed way.
The good news is she loves it and that's all that really matters.

And even better news! My second attempt turned out more like what I was hoping for.

Up next.....Bleached T-shirts....what TO DO!

Paper Roses and a Vase

I'm helping with the decorations for an activity for the young women in our church.

I wish I could say I'm really good at decorating.

But I'm not.

And the idea of being in charge of decorations gives me a panic attack.

So I'm not in charge.

Just helping.

Our theme for the night is Arise and Shine Forth.

So we're decorating in Sunshine colors.

My most significant contribution is a paper rose ball on a vase.
I've gone above and beyond this time, I know.
Just kidding. It's almost embarrassing how little this is compared to all of the other decorations going into this.

There is one thing that's awesome about my paper rose ball.

I didn't cover the whole thing in paper roses because it is a large ball and it just fit better on the vase this way.

But, if you turn it on it's side it looks like an old fashioned swimming cap on a Styrofoam wig stand.

Makes me giggle.

I was tempted to get some mister potato-head eyes, nose and mouth to stick on it.

I know, I find strange things entertaining.

Oh, and ignore the hot-glue spider webs all over everything. I seriously thought I'd cleaned them all off. 

Apparently not because there they are clear as day in every. single. picture!

I'm very proud of my vase....if I do say so myself.

It was a thrift store find --- $1

It was just clear glass.

I spray painted the inside with white gloss paint.

It looks a lot better in real life.

But 

I did get a little enthusiastic with the spray paint and so I have some drips.....oops!

But

I'm okay with it.

Kind of gives it a marbled look....adds character...or whatever.

So, the paper rose idea came from my niece Jamie who made one because she saw it on Pinterest.

My Internet was out at the time and so she explained to me how to make paper roses over the phone.

She got her inspiration from The Idea Room.

In the mean time I documented my flower making in pictures below.

But you should really check out the original here.

I did do a couple of things differently.

I used hot glue as I went, in a few spots.

It seemed as I twisted and gathered it needed some glue to keep it in place.

Also, When it was all finished I glued the little stem to one side to make the rose a little flatter and easier to glue to the ball.

My flowers don't look the same as the original but not bad for being told the gist of how to make them over the phone.

The key does seem to be twisting and gathering to make it look like real pedals. 

I'll try and get some pictures of all of the finished decorations.

Happy Flower Making!

The Jello of Sleepy Hollow

Okay, I totally had to share this! Without a doubt this is what I'd call blog worthy!

So we had a Chili Cook-Off and Jello Mold-Off at church tonight.

I've never won anything before....well unless you count the Finding Nemo towel our family won from Disney.com or the Bag of weird groceries we won from Smith's grocery store....but I'm not counting those because those were totally random and this I/we (my husband and I) won because someone liked what we did and that's never happened to me before!!!! Ever!!!

We live in Utah so of course Jello molds are a part of our culture right ;), you must have heard about green jello with shredded carrots before, or jello is its own food group, or jello with marshmallows, jello with ice cream, or jello with whipped cream, or jello with everything.

A friend even told me in her mom's old neighborhood cook book a recipe for jello called for whipped cream but said mayonnaise could be substituted for the cream.

Nasty!

Anyway, poking fun at our own culture there was a jello mold-off.

and

WE WON!

So the plan was to hollow out a pumpkin, fill it with yellow jello, then when it was set carve the pumpkin, it would look kind of like a pumpkin with a light inside.

What really happened.

The pumpkin was big - it took 4 large boxes of Jello (16 cups of water).

The jello never really became firm.

The pumpkin was super dry and stringy.

When I carved the face the jello started coming out of the mouth.

So we taped and plastic wrapped the mouth back in place to transport it to church.

Then when we got to church we took out the mouth and let the guts spill out onto a tray.

It was pretty stinkin' awesome if I do say so myself.

and

It totally helped that this pumpkin was dry and stringy because the stringy bits totally completed the look.

They judged the jello and then let people dig in.

When people dished up the jello they were taking it from the mouth it gave me a chuckle.

So the family got in on giving this jello a title.

I liked:

The Jello of Sleepy Hollow

But we also came up with:

Jell-o-Lantern

Jello Jack

Jack-o-Jello

(From 11 year old son) Pumpkin Barf.....yeah I know, he's 11.

I'm already coming up with ideas for next year!

Can't wait!

I like to look for rainbows

It was a very big day around here a couple of weekends ago.
Our son was Baptized.
And then we hosted a dinner for our family (on both sides) at our house.
We had about 45 guests.
Like I said it was a very big day!

So how do you decorate when you're hosting a party and the guest of honor is a boy but you still want it to be fun and not just blue plus inexpensive and easy but fabulous and did I mention for a boy?

Question....ponder...wonder......
Call a friend.....
Get a great suggestion and then let the good times roll!

I called my friend Shonda (amazing photographer, creative genius) who said she'd seen a cute rainbow party on a blog somewhere....
Then she reminded me of this song the kids sing at church.

Rainbows! Perfect!

So I used the words from the song and made these two printables. If you're interested in the 8.5x11 printable above you can find it in my Etsy shop here

I decorated with balloons and crepe paper in rainbow colors.

Each table was covered with a tablecloth one color in the rainbow.

The smaller printable was in the center of the table with pictures of our boy around it.

My daughter helped me make these fabulous cupcakes, (recipe here)

image source OurBestBites.com

Which we proudly displayed on a cupcake stand with one of the small printables I made on top.

My boy loved it.

I loved it.

and guess who didn't get a single picture!

Yep, too busy with everything else and forgot the pictures.

That's okay.

This way you can imagine it as amazing and colorful as you want and I'll just say, "you bet, that's exactly what it looked like!"

The Pinewood Derby Can be a good idea

Seriously, I think the most anticipated and the most dreaded part of cub scouts here in the United States is the pinewood derby. (The boys are supposed to make their own cars from a kit and then race them. Unfortunately, quite often the Dad's end up doing most of it.)
It is so much work and every boy is just sure his car is going to win but not every car can be a winner and it's so disappointing when they're not. Plus, not every boy has a dad with computerized power tools and an Engineering degree.

But I think our Cub Master came up with the perfect solution.

The boys built their cars the night of the Derby, at the church where our pack meetings are held 1 1/2 hours before the races started.
Brilliant!
Why have I not heard of this before?
The boys were given a paper with 9 car designs they could choose from or they could draw their own design on the grid provided on the paper. Then the papers were handed back in about a week or so before the derby. Three men in our neighborhood cut all of the cars out then the night of the derby the boys sanded, decorated and applied weights and wheels.

Then the races were on.

I've never seen so many close races before in my life. All of the boys were so happy to see who won and there was not one single tear shed that night. It was great!

Doodle's car was awesome and he won the "Best Design" award. He was so happy. So were we.

I can honestly say that I highly recommend this approach to the Pinewood Derby. If you think you'd like to try it out and would like some more in depth information about the way it was run feel free to email me and I'll do my best to help you out.

What I've Learned

Sometimes you think you know what you want.

You focus with all of your might and mind and energy and you try to make it work.

Even when it takes so much....you are strong you will make it work...

You are a pin point of focused concentration and determination.

The ability to be such is a gift.

But somehow your goal keeps slipping.

And you realize it wasn't meant to stay firmly in your grasp it wasn't meant to work for you this time.

Then you take a step back.

And you take a good long look at the bigger picture. When you see how beautifully everything fits together with your new perspective and how blessed you truly are you're glad that sometimes things don't work-out.  But most of all you're full of gratitude for a loving Heavenly Father who sees the bigger picture of all life and helps you discover the bigger picture of your life.

That's what I've learned....lately.