Our 2015 Fourth of July T-Shirts

 This years 4th of July t-shirts were a family affair.  Even Dad got into the production.  

First we bought blue and red bandannas. 

  We washed the bandannas and dried and ironed them.  We then applied Heat'n Bond Ultra Hold to the cloth.  After applying the Heat'n Bond we traced different sized stars onto the paper and then cut them out. 

 Cutting out the stars

 Placing the stars in the perfect location onto her shirt.

 Daddy doing the ironing.

 Our super cute shirts!

Head over here to see last year's shirts. 

Some of shirts from the past are here. 

2014--Fourth of July T-Shirts

 After a 2 year hiatus, we made some great 4th of July t-shirts this afternoon.

I found the idea on pinterest and it is from this website.

 The first step is to simply draw stars onto freezer paper.  (I never heard of ironing freezer paper onto cloth....you learn something new everyday)

 I purchased regular Froot of the Loom colored shirts.  I placed cereal boxes inside the side to prevent bleeding from one side to the other.

 After the stars are cut out, iron them onto the shirts using a medium iron.

I did a few stars on each side of the shirt.

 Now, talk to the children about the dangerous aspect to this part of the process. We filled a spray bottle with bleach and a touch of water.  We also used this mixture in squirt guns.   Bleach is poison, and I stressed it was only to be sprayed on the shirts.

I used a little spray bottle to go around the stars....I could have used a little less but this was our first try at this type of shirt.  The sunshine bleached the cloth in just a couple minutes.

 Then the kids went at it with the squirt guns. 

 I then turned the shirts over and they squirted the backs...you can see the cool lines appearing on the back of Kimberly's shirt.

The big kids now want shirts. I know now that less bleach will do just fine, and that we will have to move quicker.  The freezer paper isn't waterproof, so some of the bleach did leak through the stars.

 Quickly bring the shirts in and rinse in the sink until you have removed most of the bleach.

The final step is to wash them in the washing machine.

 We're very happy with the final results!!

You can check out our past t-shirts over here.

Happy Fourth of July!!

A Look Back at Our 4th of July T-Shirts

 We've had a lot of fun over the years making 4th of July t-shirts.

I thought you might get a kick out of seeing them from the archives.

Our 2008 shirts are shown above. 

 2010 fun and instructions.

2011 Sharpie magic.



Our very first shirts, from 2007.

2011 4th of July T-Shirts

Our 2011 4th of July homemade t-shirts are complete!!
I found the instructions for these shirts over at The Butterfly Garden.

You can check out our 2010 shirts here, and 2008 shirts here, and 2007 shirts here.

Three Cheers for the Red White and Blue--Our 4th of July shirts

Our 4th of July t-shirts--circa 2010!!!

I got this year's idea from the Family Fun website.

The process is never as pretty as the final results.

You can see our 2008 shirts on this past post.

Our 2007 shirts at over here.

Thank goodness for my homegrown teenage assistants!!

What we will do for Grandpa on his birthday

My dad has always been a Boston Red Sox fan. We are not! I believe he choose this team just to cause problems for New York Yankee fans, but I am not accusing him of anything. (at least today on his birthday I won't accuse him)

I made these shirts for us to wear today. I figured that for this one special day, we could put aside our differences and all get along. But just this one day. After today, the friendliness is over once again.

Actually, after the first photo, some people were having real problems wearing these shirts.

We love you, Grandpa!!

And now there is a picture to prove how deep out love for you goes.

4th of July t-shirts 2008

Last year we had so much fun making 4th of July t-shirts, I decided to make it a tradition.

This year I got the design idea from Family Fun magazine.

All we needed was a white t-shirt, red and blue fabric paint, sponge brushes, masking tape, and star stickers. We layed down masking tape to form our design area. Shown above will be Mark's red stripes.

On Mark's shirt, he carefully sponged the paint on, he tried not to brush is on so that the paint didn't get under the tape.

Grace has a diagonal design for her shirt. It takes patience to dab all that red paint on a shirt, you can tell by Grace's concentration.

I gave Luke help with his.

This is Kimberly's shirt. After painting her red stripes, we outlined an area for blue paint. We also stuck star stickers in this area.

Be careful when you sponge the paint on the stars, you don't want them to "unstick". It took ours about two hours to completely dry. We then peeled off the tape. The stars were tricky to get off, but we did it!

Kimberly's amazing results.

We were all so happy with these shirts for the little kids, the big girls all got white t-shirts and made their own.

We are now ready for the big 4th of July parade tomorrow.