pretty much anyone who knows me (or reads my blog posts) knows that i am a complete night owl. it's definitely when i do my best thinking and working and planning and all that. as it happens, it is 3:03AM while i'm typing this sentence so i'm staying true to form. all that to say that i completed a couple of projects very late this evening and i couldn't wait to share the results! ready?!?!
tada! i completely reinvigorated an old pair of shorts with the help of a little bleach gel, a stencil or two, and a lot of patience. i got the idea from a t-shirt that i made at a jungle-themed vacation bible school when i was little. it involved using a bleach pen to create animal designs on a colored shirt. i wish i had a picture of it, but as far as i know there are none to be found.
anyway, i always loved that shirt and wanted to try it again...so i did and i'm pretty pleased with the result. be forewarned that it did take me a few hours to complete this project, partly because it's just time consuming, and partly because my back was killing me from leaning over the project so i took a few breaks. i think the time it took was totally worth it though!
i started my project at Michael's, where many good projects start. i bought some cheap angled paint brushes and a cute rose stencil. i already had the shorts, paper plate, and bleach pen at home.
i decided to go with the paintbrush technique instead of just squirting the gel straight from the pen so i could have more control of the product. i found that working with the gel in "batches" worked better than squirting it all out on the plate at the same time. i would dole out a quarter sized blob onto the plate and let it sit there for about 10 minutes before using it so that it could firm up a bit, cause other wise it was too watery and would spread on the fabric.
i thought it would be good to have a good template of what i wanted the design to look like since i was only using bits and pieces of the stencil (which i eventually cut up). it's not too fancy but it gave me a good starting point.
after that it was just a lot of stencil work. i made sure to stay within the boundaries of the stencil and to wipe the stencil after each use so that i wouldn't transfer bleach to any unwanted places. in this picture the more pinky design on the left is "fresh" and still wet. the gel dries to a chalky white color, which you can see on the right.
these are the shorts right before i rinsed the dried gel off with cold water to deactivate the bleach.
after i rinsed the shorts i put them on a short cycle by themselves in the washer with a smidge of detergent and then dried them for about 15-20 minutes.
here's a close-up shot of one of the better designs.
i even did some detail work on the back pockets! it's really easy to go overboard though, so be careful!
anyway, that's my amateur DIY for ya! comment if you have any questions! sometimes it's hard to know what makes sense to others. enjoy and have fun :)
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