how i make my custom shirts
supplies
- thin cardboard / watercolor paper / any thin but sturdy material you can just into.
- paint (i use speedball fabric paint. but i can show you how to do it with acrylic)
- scissors, box cutter, any cutting tool.
i start off my sketching my design onto the cardboard itself to cut out, this is gonna be your stencil and cut it out. I reuse boxes like these where it's a thinner cardboard but still decently sturdy for my stencils.
if its something too specific like some text or an image i print out whatever im turning into a stencil, cut it out, trace it onto the cardboard and then cut that out. or like how im doing here im just tracing on paper from my drawing tablet(before i had a working printer.)
theres probably an easier way for this but this is just how i do it sometimes.
i put something solid on the inside of the shirt to keep the paint from seeping through onto the rest of the shirt and to keep it flat and centered.
tape the stencil onto the shirt and make sure theres no wrinkles and that its all centered in the right placement.
i use a big-ish paint brush to paint in the stencil, i use speedball fabric paint but i've also used acrylic paint i heat treated afterwards with an iron. i've also heard people mix fabric softener with acrylic paint but i haven't tested that yet. rollerball is good because you don't need to use that much and even after a few years the fading is pretty minimal. I haven't stress tested acrylic enough to know how long it lasts compared to speedball.
after you're done painting in the stencil peel it off, the speedball paint usually takes a week or a few days to cure before you wash it with cold water.
but if you only have acrylic paint then you can heat treat it with an iron. make sure to have a piece of fabric over it so it doesn't get stuck directly on the iron and be sure to keep moving. Iron it for about 5 minutes or longer if it's a bigger print.
there you go. now you've got a shirt.