Let's Go Stencils

 I saw this really neat design here and it immediately made me think of my brother. The original poster was selling shirts last year like that, but I don't know if he still is. I decided to just adapt his design and stencil it on some thrift store T-shirts I picked up. I kind of feel bad copying other people's design, but I'm using it for gifts for family members, not selling it, so I'm going to call it inspiration rather than theft.

To make the stencils I just printed variations of the design on full page sticker paper, on an ink jet printer (laser jet printers have trouble with the thick paper). Then I cut out the design with an exacto knife, so essentially I end up with a stencil that is also a sticker. This means it can stick directly to the fabric and doesn't move around while painting. However, it also means it's not reusable, so I would only suggest this method for simple designs and only a few prints. I was going a little bit crazy by the time I was cutting out the 6th stencil!

I went to the Downtown Rescue Mission Thrift Store, which is by far my favorite thrift store in Huntsville. They have a huge selection of clothes, and if you pay attention to which tags are discounted you can get stuff for really cheap; the T-shirts I bought ended up averaging to about a dollar each.

The yellow one is my new biking shirt:

I wasn't sure what size shirt my brother wears, and he didn't respond to my text when I asked him, so I asked my mom. Her response wasn't very helpful, "He's a medium, but his shoulders are pretty big, so maybe a large medium, or a large that runs small, but he doesn't like his shirts to be too loose." So I just bought a medium shirt, a medium shirt that looked pretty big, and a large shirt, and made three variations of the design! So hopefully one will fit him, and if one is too big I'll give it to my dad because he bikes too.

The paint got a little messed up on this one, and I later I noticed the design was crooked too, so at least I got all the screw ups out of the way on one shirt! 

For the gray one I made the stencil a lot smaller and put it where the pocket would be if there was a pocket.

For the green shirt I left out the Let's part and just printed the GO bicycle larger.

After the last shirt I decided I really liked the GO design by itself, so I made two small stencils to go on some old pairs of shorts I already had.

Enjoy!