Polkadot Shamrock Tee Tutorial

I was scanning Pinterest the other day and came across this adorable Polkadot Valentine Shirt from 2013 when Erin from Hazel & Company guest posted for us.  I love the simplicity of this polkadot stamping idea and thought I would try it with my daughter and create a Polkadot Shamrock Tee.

Supply List:

3 different bottles of green acrylic/fabric paint

White cotton t-shirt

Vinyl stencil or freezer paper with shape cut out

paper plate

butcher paper

pencils with fairly new erasers or q-tips

Optional: an adorable little person

Instructions:

Step #1:  Set up

Lay butcher paper out and tape it down.  Squirt the green paint in quarter-sized circles.  Put your stencil on the front of the t-shirt…if you are using a vinyl stencil cut from a digital craft cutter, make sure it sticks really well to the shirt.  If you use the freezer paper method: cut shamrock out of freezer paper and iron the freezer paper where you want it on the shirt. IMPORTANT: slip a piece of cardboard or plastic bag inside the shirt so the paint won’t bleed to the back of the shirt. 

Step #2:  Stamping with Pencil Erasers

Use a different pencil eraser for each paint color. Dip the eraser in the paint, then stamp it on the plate one time to get excess paint off.  Now stamp the eraser randomly inside the stencil on the shirt.

Step #3:  When your stencil is full of polkadots and you are happy with the result, let it dry.  I was hoping to distract my impatient daughter by having her clean up the mess while the paint dried…ummm, nope.  She cleaned it up at super speed and ran to get the blow dryer to help the paint along.
Step #4:  Once the paint is completely dry, remove the stencil and you have a perfect polkadot shamrock t-shirt.

I got thinking about all the older tutorials we have from our years of craft blogging and decided to start a new weekly series for 2015 called Throwback Tutorials. Is there one you would like to see us create again?  Leave a comment and come back next week to see what we do.