DIY Bleach Dyed Fan Shirts

This year our team was in the Super Bowl- fun stuff!  A couple of days before the big game I decided it would be fun to try and make some shirts for me and the girls... well, honestly, more like the day before :)  I remembered seeing a cool bleach "dying" method on Pinterest from one of my favorite blogs, Six Sisters' Stuff which you can see here!  I kind of read through it for some helpful hints, then thought, "I've got this!"  Sometimes that thought can be disastrous... but this is a super easy process!

I started out by creating this graphic.  If you happen to be a San Fransisco fan, feel free to steal it {Click here for graphic} or print out any graphic of your choosing!  We are having College Day at school every Wednesday and many of my students don't have college related clothing- I was thinking about doing this simple process with college initials for them as well!

 

I already had a roll of contact paper, so I decided to use that!  I simply taped the printed out graphic onto the contact paper then used an exact-o knife to cut it out... being careful to not cut out the whole center so the whole piece was still intact like a stencil (compare the graphic above to the final design so you can see what parts I did not cut!).

 Next I peeled off the paper backing and placed the graphic stencil on the shirt making sure it was well adhered in all places.

For the bleach solution, I used an empty and well washed hair spray bottle.  I filled it 2/3 of the way with bleach filling the last third with water.  As the Six Sisters post suggested, I used a piece of cardboard from a cereal box to place inside the tee shirt to keep the bleach from soaking through.  Next I carefully sprayed a thin layer and waited...

While Six Sisters suggested waiting up to 20 minutes... me of little patience found other ways, lol!  After waiting the first minute I started seeing instant results but wanted more... I gently dabbed the puddled bleach off the stencil part and sprayed a bit more.  I waited about 1 minute more before it hit me- BLOW DRYER!  At this point the hubby was looking at me with the you-are-slightly-crazy-why-can't-you-just-wait look, but I didn't want to wait.  Then I got the this-will-not-work look, but it did!  The blow dryer intensified the bleaching process!  I sprayed a little more on and blow dried again till I was happy with it.  Once I felt that it was a large enough contrast, I carefully peeled the contact paper off and dunked the shirt in the bathtub to quickly rinse and dilute the bleach.

It turned out great the first try!  I peeled the contact paper off my shirt and put it on to big sissy's shirt and did the same.  It seemed like the contact paper would most likely do three shirts before it would have to be trashed.  Once both shirts were bleached then dunked, I did a full wash to make sure all the bleach was out.  

Oh- and the best part... we got these shirts at JoAnn's for only $3 each!  What a steal.  Only bummer is that they didn't have red onsies so little sis didn't get one.  Maybe next year :)  

 

I loved this and will definitely be doing it again!  Thanks for stopping in to check them out!