With university classes starting in less than a week now, you better seal your piggy-banks! Regretting all those restaurant dinners, fancy lattes, and many drinks had at the pub yet? Don't worry, you are far from being the only one! If you haven't purchased a new shirt for the fall yet, and are a bit apprehensive about spending the money with tuition looming, may I make a suggestion? Cosmic and galaxy print have been pretty trendy for over a year now, but for a print that covers the entire surface of a shirt, it get's to be a bit pricey. However, as it turns out, they are not terribly difficult to make at home. Let me show you:
Step 1.
You will need:
- bleach
- spray bottle
- tap water
- newspaper
- dark shirt
Before you get started, let me just provide you with some words of caution! Bleach, even a diluted solution, will react with almost any surface - this includes furniture, fabric, laminate floors as well as your skin and eyes. Please take caution in where you choose to do this project and in what you wear while performing bleaching techniques. This project is best done outside on rocky surfaces (concrete, gravel) away from plant life that can wilt if too much bleach is soaked into the surrounding soil. Make sure you wear clothes that, if damaged by bleach, won't break your heart. Gloves and glasses/goggles are recommended. If you get any bleach solution on your skin, rinse it off quickly with cold water. If you get any bleach solution in your eyes, flush your eyes with cold water for at least one minute.
Now before I take any more of the fun out of this project, let us begin!
a) In the spray bottle, you will want to create a 50% solution of bleach in water. I added roughly 150mL of water, then filled it with bleach to 300mL. This turned out to be a very generous amount, and I would recommend, if you're only doing one shirt, 50mL of water mixed with 50mL of bleach. Swirl the solution before using.
b) Lay your shirt over top of the newspaper outside. Place a few sheets of newspaper inside the shirt so that the bleach will not bleed onto the fabric of the backside of the shirt. Try to lay your shirt as flat as possible, with the seams of the shirt on either side facing out.
c) Visually pick out a few spots on your shirt where you want to illustrate your cosmic events. I picked the right shoulder and bottom left corner. Spray these two spots closely and multiple times. With the nozzle further away from the shirt, spray each corner so that a light mist comes down on the shirt, rather than a concentration on on spot. Wait a few minutes for the bleach to lighten the shirt. When lightening appears to have ceased, you may choose to spray more in the same spots to achieve a lighter appearance, or, if you are happy with the colour, proceed to step d. I continued when my shirt had a rusty, red colour.
d) Repeat steps b and c, but on the backside of the shirt. Be careful to keep concentrated sprays in spots that will match that of the other side! By that, I don't mean mirror image of the front side, but to make sure that it matches up at the seams. If you need to correct an area where a straight line separates a bleached area from a non-bleached area, cover the bleached area with a straight edge of a newspaper and spray the non-bleached area.
e) While your shirt is being lightened, fill a bowl/sink with soapy, warm water. Once you are happy with the tone achieved in the bleached spots on your shirt, wash your shirt in the soapy water, being careful not to drip any excess bleach on the newspaper. The soapy water will turn a rather awful shade of orange, and when it appears that colour of the water has stopped getting darker, you can remove your shirt and rinse it with lots of cold water. Make sure your shirt has dried before proceeding to Step 2. The soapy water should be disposed of either down the sink with lots of water. Any excess bleach solution can also be disposed of down the sink with lots of water.
Step 2.
You will need:
- newspaper
- sponges (such as spongey paintbrushes)
- acrylic paint or fabric paint
- paintbrushes
- toothpicks or other pointed material
- a bristled brush (such as a toothbrush or dish brush)
a) Using a sponge and minimal white acrylic paint, start patting a thin layer of white in the centre of each bleached spot on the side of the shirt you are working on. Make sure that the distribution of paint is quite even - you may have to revert back to your pre-school days are use your fingers to smudge that paint in!
b) This step is similar to step a, but we get a little more colourful here! It is up to you what colours you choose to use in your galaxy, but the best looks are achieved with complimentary colours (cool colours with other cool colours, hot colours with other hot colours). I picked orange and yellow. Using the darker of these two colours, use your sponge and dab lightly around the white, centre portion of your bleach galaxy. Add the lighter colour afterwards over the darker colour on the inner edge. Don't forget to get your fingers dirty and smudge in that paint!
c) To achieve that final pop, pick one or two more colours to add to the edges of your first paint colours. These colours look best when their shades are closely matching the original colour of your shirt. I chose a deeper purple colour and red.
d) You're going to have to go back outside for this step! Bring some newspaper too! First you are going to mix some white acrylic paint with a very small amount of water, so that you arrive at roughly the consistency pictured on the left. The dish-washing brush also pictured will be used to create a starry effect over your cosmic shirt. Lay your shirt out on some newspaper. You may lay the newspaper over lawn or concrete this time, but hardwood/plastic is not recommended because paint may be difficult to remove from the surface.
If you don't want any paint splatter inside your shirt, tear a piece of newspaper and lay it within the collar. Dipping your bristled brush into the watered-down white paint, drag your fingers along the bristled in claw-like fashion. It may take a couple swipes to get the hang of it - you may want to practice on a piece of newspaper first!
e) Now that your shirt is speckled with hundreds of thousands of stars, you can bring it back inside. You may notice that some stars (spots) burn brighter than others (are a bit larger than the rest...). No big deal! We'll just make them shine! You will use a thin flat edge to paint white spikes onto these larger spots. I took a picture of the short bristled, flat edged paintbrush I opted for, but a young guitarist photobombed it. A toothpick would also work well.
To give these stars an added pop, dip your thumb in some pale blue paint (kind of like Mr. Guitarist's shirt colour above), remove most of the paint on the newspaper, then smudge your thumb right in the centre of the star. Redo the star spikes if necessary.
Continue to spike all those larger white dots! This is also a nice way to correct any spots due to unwanted bleach dripping.
Once you are happy with the number of stars, you are done! Well... you are done at least one side of the shirt! Let the first side of your shirt dry for 10 to 20 minutes before flipping it over and repeating steps a to e on the backside of the shirt.
Enjoy your new cosmic shirt!
My results:
frontside
backside
note: I added a little cosmic dust to some of my galaxies, but did not include them in the tutorial. This is because it turned out to be a little tricky, and many recorrections were made. The ones actually pictured were sheer luck that they turned out the way they did. I had no idea what I was doing.
Total Money Spent = $2.24 for the shirt, which was purchased from Value Village for 50% off.
