I like posting things I make with the logo here, just in case it makes the newsletter…
BUT this was my first time trying this technique and I’m not totally happy with it, so if anybody has a shirt they want like this, bring it my way and I’ll make you one to perfect things! I sprayed too big an area. Also learned that vinyl does not like to stick to fabric so getting it off the transfer tape is pretty bad, it becomes a “put on a podcast this’ll be a while” process and I’m going to try the next one with MDF just laid on it or something. Also this was 50% bleach/water left on until I could kinda barely make out a design then I washed it because I was paranoid, but I don’t think it’s light enough.
Anybody else have tips/tricks/examples? Want a shirt? This is a women’s medium I’ll GIVE it to you so I can try again, I don’t care about the $6 at target I lost to experiment.
Later I will post a pic of a bleach print project on some black pants. They are now maybe my favorite pants.
There is a myth story about how the leopard got his spots.
Its about how some god or goddess from the African pantheon was giving a gift back to a lovely [plain colored] cat, and used 5 fingers dipped in dye/mud/paint to print the spots on what became the leopard. While said kitty slept? Cool.
Well, for my project, i had accidentally splashed bleach on my newish black sweatpants while adjusting my hot tub chlorination. Were they ruined by the red splash spots? Nope, no visible frabric damage.
So… I put on a facemask, my painting outfit, 2 layers of nitrile gloves, and kept a rinse hose running just in case.
. Then i put on a cotton work glove, and attempted a leopardy 5 fingertip print on my pants. Using protected fingers on cotton glove dipped in full strength bleach. [Scary? A bit] But i wound up with what looks like red roses. Even better, but very different than intended.
Ive known about the bleach spatter technique… but never tried it.
Toothbrush? Showerbrush? Bundle of sticks?
And yeah, how long you wait before dunking fabric into a rinse bucket [with vinegar to quench the alkali] has everything to do with your result, so practicing on small swatches makes sense if you can tolerate optimization. I mean if you wait too long… you get holes, not decolorized spots . You might be ok with holes that get fuzzy after 3 or 4 washes.
So practicing helps you get what you think you want.
And thus, you also get a subsequent reduction of odd but creative results.
Now… Where did I leave my pants?.. oops, that sounds worse online than in person.
Alright friends I tried again and here is my official outfit check photo from yesterday’s expo table. I LOVE how this one turned out and I got compliments from everyone except @r3mm13’s daugher who told me my shirt was dirty and that was freaking adorable.
spray shirts are hard because you need to know when to STOP and I’m bad at that. It’s a “less is more” activity.
It’s easiest on a COTTON shirt - $3 gildan from Michaels - because you can almost instantly see the effects of the bleach. even the heather colors they made start to be a blend, and my target shirt was cotton/modal which I love because I have sophisticated tastes but that was not a good beginner choice.
This shirt was made by laser cutting the logo and stencil out of MDF, then using the stencil to lay out the parts, lifting it up with the cutouts left behind. So nothing adhesive was involved and I can re-use my template a million times so we could have a fun logo spray day or spray a wichita flag day or something and it’d be super easy!
