If you have a lot of time on your hands, but you don't want to spend a lot of money, there are a couple of methods I have recently seen (on you tube, etc) that provided better results than I had anticipated. I thought I'd pass it along. I recently ordered some T-shirts to be professionally screen-printed, but you have to order a lot of them to get the individual price lower.
There are videos about using bleach to make a pattern, art, or letters. You make a stencil out of "freezer paper" which is waxy on one side. Then you insert some cardboard inside the T-shirt to make a firmer base, plus to prevent the bleach from bleeding through to the back. Locate the stencil and then iron the freezer paper with the waxy side towards the T-shirt so its sticky and won't move around.
Mix bleach and water 50%/50% in the spray bottle, pure bleach will burn a hole in the cloth.
You use a spray bottle that is adjusted to produce a mist, and wet down the letter cut-outs. Wait about ten seconds, then dab the wetness with paper towels to stop the bleaching (it will continue to fade for a dew seconds after you dab). Then pull out the cardboard, and dunk the T-shirt into a bucket of water to completely stop the reaction. Wash and dry, then its ready to go.
The freezer paper I found is 18 inches wide, and 100 feet long. It was the only size that walmart had that day, and it was $7. So...its seven cents a foot. If you used 2-feet per shirt, you could do 50 shirts, but...its very time consuming.
The first shirt I am trying this on is black because...I figured that if the bleach bled out sideways from the stencil, I could re-draw the edges sharp with the permanent black felt marker.
The font I chose is from Microsoft "Word", it is called "Arial", I made it "bold", the letter size is 150 pt.
If you like the curve of the arched letters, the radius is about one foot, I traced it from the lid of a 55-gallon drum. Arching can easily be printed out in Photoshop, but I didn't have that available today.
The most important tip is...try this out on an old free T-shirt before doing it to a new $5 t-shirt.
1/2 gallon of cheap bleach
spray bottle that can produce an even mist
$5 dark T-shirt with a front pocket
$7 roll of freezer paper that is waxy on one side
clothes-iron (used one from a thrift store?)
bucket (or sink) of water
tape
razor blades or x-acto knife
sheet of cardboard that will fit inside T-shirt
paper towels
sharpie black felt marker
I added safety glasses and rubber gloves, but...this can be done without them if you exercise caution.
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