Stenciled Shrimp Shirt

Two Christmases ago I put freezer paper on my wishlist and ended up with two gigantic rolls! So when my dad asked me to make a shirt featuring an inside joke for his colleague, I was excited to finally use some of my freezer paper. I've never made a shirt for anyone else so I was a little nervous about the final outcome. Every black design on the shirt was made using a freezer paper stencil!

Materials

• plain colored t-shirt
• pencil
• Xacto knife
• freezer paper
• iron
• black fabric paint
• craft paint brush

I loved the look of the stencil, post-fabric painting.

Using a pencil, draw out your desired letters or images. Make sure you know which parts will be negative and positive space. Then cut out your designs using an Xacto knife.

Iron the freezer paper stencil onto your shirt.

Using a brush, paint over the parts of the stencil that you cut out. I used a cheap paint brush instead of a foam brush because the foam brush soaked up too much paint but didn't distribute paint with enough accuracy for my taste.

Let the paint dry and slowly peel the freezer paper off your shirt! I wasn't too meticulous when I cut out the letters for my stencil so there are a few paint marks extend past my letters. But I like that it lends the t-shirt a homemade feel. Here is the shrimp phrase and shrimp image after removing the freezer paper stencil.

The finished shirt! Shout out to my dad for providing the Chinese characters. The letters aren't perfect since some parts of the stencil weren't ironed down as well as they could've been, but I was really happy with the outcome.

I can't wait to design another shirt! Also if anyone has any other craft uses for freezer paper I'd love to know :)

♥ Justine