DIY T-Shirt Workshop for Teens

This program grew out of the wants of my teens. When we did the Pinterest Crafts event in April, several of them were disappointed not to be doing a t-shirt craft.

I perused Pinterest and came up with four different ideas: tie-dye with paint spray, bleached out, crayon& sandpaper, and textured designs.

The paint spray was made from acrylic craft paint and water. Four parts water to one part paint ended up being the perfect mixture for the spray bottles I picked up at the local dollar store.

Some of the teens saturated their shirts in paint. Ideally, it's supposed to look more airbrushed than tie-dyed. I mentioned that you have to rinse regular tie-dye and some of them then rinsed their saturated shirts out with interesting results.

The bleached out shirts used bleach pens. I looked into making bleach spray, but thought the pens would be easier to control. Good ventilation is needed for this!

Crayon and sandpaper is pretty easy. Draw a picture with crayons on sandpaper and then iron it on to a shirt.

The textured designs were simply dipping textured plastic balls (picked up at the dollar store and Wal-mart) in acrylic craft paint and then stamping them on the shirt.

This was so much fun, I repeated it at 2 other branches for kids. We only did the paint spray and texture designs at these events.