This past weekend, one of my best Chicago friends celebrated her birthday with taco bar crawl. Hello, tacos. Hello, margaritas. Hello, more tacos. It was seriously awesome especially because a few of us opted to rock taco shirts. Taco-themed phrases included:
Holy Shit, I <3 Tacos
Fitness? More Like Fitness Whole Taco in My Mouth
In the hopes of saving a little extra dough for tacos, it was off to Michael's I went for my very own DIY taco shirt: Taco 'bout a Party. I spent way too much time contemplating just about everything, but that's pretty much me in a nutshell (seriously, don't take me to Mariano's or Whole Foods around lunch time. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL).
I opted for a white tank (that I would dye at home with color I already had), gold glitter t-shirt paint (because.... why not?) and puffy white paint. And with a my AWESOME template I made with illustrator, I went to work:
Tshirt
Dye (optional)
X-acto knife
Freezer paper - note: wax paper works, but not really (see below)
Painters tape
Tshirt paint
Looking forward to the warmer weather, I opted for a tank top. I wasn't, however, thrilled with the idea of it being a boring, white tee, so I dug out the bottles of dye I had in the back of my closet. Wanting teal, I filled my bucket - ahem, plastic drawer from the good 'ole college days - with hot water and equal parts Aquamarine and Kelly Green (RIT Liquid Dye). I didn't use salt and wished the color would have been a little bit brighter, but otherwise, I'm happy with it!
While that dried, I started working on my stencil. First, I taped my print out to the counter, and then I taped a sheet of wax paper (yes, wax paper. And I wouldn't recommend it) over that. I quickly traced everything on to the wax paper with an extra fine-point sharpie before using my X-acto knife to cut out everything. Remember to keep the inner circles of O's, A's R's, P's, etc!
[Fast forward to the next day, so that the shirt was completely dry] If you are good at following directions - not me - this is where you iron on the freezer paper stencil directly to the shirt. I didn't use freezer paper, and much to my disappointment, wax paper does not want to stick. Sad day. Instead, I used painters tape to secure the stencil. It kind of, sort of worked.
Paint. Paint. Paint. Remove stencil. Let it dry. As to be expected, I had trouble keeping the stencil flat to my shirt, so there were a few big oopsie spots! To hide those (and give it a little something extra), I outlined everything and filled the taco with white puffy paint.
It's not perfect - but you know what? That's OK. I was still happy with it!! Here's the finished product:
** I was so proud of my taco shirt, that when the birthday girl's shirt got delayed in the mail - I jumped to make another (which turned out way, way, way better). Think ombre and Disney, and of course, you'll be seeing a post on that later.
End story: We rocked our super sweet taco shirts and super cute mini sombreros all day long!
________
- LG
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