Declaring My Love …

Here I am wearing my favorite Valentine’s Day surprise.  I love it. I love it so much I could wear it every day because it’s super comfy.  And because I really love my Hubby a whole, whole lot. I wanted him to know it. So I made a shirt declaring it for everybody to see.

I’ve wanted to make a shirt like this every since I saw AmberLee’s shirt last year. But I was chicken to try freezer paper stenciling.  I’ve read the tutorials over and over online.  I think my biggest hang up was using an exacto knife to cut out my stencil.  It just didn’t sound like it would go well at all.

So I waited until I had another option.

Here’s how I did it:

First I found a great t-shirt at Target. I like this one because it had that baseball vibe, since my man is a baseballer.

Next I bugged my friend Ronalin to let me use her Silhouette Cameo cutter. It is a fine piece of machinery and I am super jealous that she has one – except not really, because she lets me use it whenever I want.

I quickly designed my shirt making sure to use a chunky font that would show up well on the shirt. It took a mere two minutes for the Silhouette to cut my freezer paper into this:

Freezer paper is a parchment paper that is backed with plastic. Butchers use it {used to use it?} to wrap meat.  You can occasionally find it in the tinfoil aisle of the grocery store. Or you can get lucky like me and have your mom give you some she found at a garage sale. If you’d like to get some check here. For this project, I wanted the shiny plastic side face down on the shirt.

Now it was time to iron.  When you iron freezer paper the plastic backing heats up and adheres to the shirt, creating a perfect bond for the stencil. Sidenote: do you have any idea how hard it is to iron with your left hand while photographing it with your right? Crazy.

Here’s my shirt after I ironed it.  At this point I was so excited I could hardly stand it. I am a serious dork. Before I could start painting, I slipped a piece of cardboard in between the shirt layers so the paint wouldn’t bleed through from the front to the back.

When painting the shirt I used a sponge brush and a dabbing technique so the paint didn’t get too thick and the brush didn’t separate the stencil from the shirt.  I used a gold paint from Martha Stewart’s craft paint line which is suitable for fabric. I found my paint for $2 at Michaels.

Here is the shirt after I finished painting it.  I let it dry for a few hours and then peeled the freezer paper right off. It was so easy to peel and the lines of my wording were perfectly crisp.  I sealed the paint by ironing it, but first I put a dishtowel over my design to protect the iron and the paint.

I love how this shirt turned out!  I will definitely be doing freezer paper stencil for future projects.  I can think of all sorts of cute t-shirts to make for Owlie this summer.

Are you gutsy {or crazy} enough to wear a shirt with your sweetheart’s name on it? Or do you think I’m a complete weirdo?

My Hubby absolutely loved this surprise.  He’s worth it.  And I’m going to wear it all the time.

So long Valentine’s Day. Can’t wait for next year.