Hand Painted Halloween Shirts

After working on the Halloween Stationary, I still had an itch to do something crafty. I was planning on purchasing the kiddos Halloween shirts, but decided making them would be much more fun.

My chosen method was to hand paint their shirts. Since I am no Michealangelo (as we learned from my last post), I needed to keep it fairly simple and within the realm of my freehand drawing skills. So, I drew a simple black cat for big sissy (age 5) and a super simple spider for baby brother (age 3). I painted them with melted crayons and removed the wax when they were cool. Afterwards, I outlined them with a black marker.

Here's how they turned out:

Black Cat

The tail wraps around the shirt to the back.

Close-up of cat. I was trying to mimic cat hair with my brush strokes, but should probably have done them front to back vice top to bottom.

She looks calico! This was unintentional, as I was trying to get a vintage washed out look. I've also added splatters of purple crayon. This was to add some Halloween-y color and to cover up a few accidental splatters.

Spider

Close up of spider. Even though I painted it black, it is in fact a brown recluse. You can tell by the violin shape on his back! (When I said this to my husband, he accused me of being a dork.)

Detail of green and purple splatters for extra decoration (and to cover up a few accidents!)

A few things I learned:

1) Don't use cheap crayons. They bleed when you remove the wax from the shirt.

2) Melted crayons give off noxious fumes. Do this in a well ventilated area.

3) Don't use cheap paintbrushes. I bought some super cheap ones, figuring I would just throw them away rather than clean them. Those paintbrushes were the pits, and were the bane of this project.

I hope the kiddos love their new shirts :)

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