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Stamps & Painted T-shirts
(Author: Andrea Scholes  http://www.scholesstudios.com/)

This is something I’d read about years ago, and have been playing with ever since.

By using the cleaning product "Soft Scrub with Bleach" (SS), you can stamp colored T-shirts, getting really cool results. When I talk about "bleach" or SS, I am actually talking about the Soft Scrub with Bleach.

NOTES:
-Make sure you wear junky clothes, in case you spill any of the SS, you won’t ruin good clothes.
-Make sure you’ve protected your work area with newspapers.
-You won’t know what your bleached out areas will look like. It depends on what colors were used in the dying process of the shirts. I’ve had black bleach out to orange, purple to pink, green to peach, green to white. It’s like a cool surprise.

BASIC INSTRUCTIONS:

Step 1. Wash and dry the t-shirts, to get rid of the sizing. I prefer 100% cotton, but cotton/poly blends work fine.

Step 2. Put cardboard or newspapers inside the t-shirt. Make sure the parts you want to stamp on are nice and flat. The cardboard and/or newspapers stop the bleach from going through to the back, so be sure to have enough and to have them where you’re going to apply the SS.

Step 3. The stamps that work best for this are bold, not very detailed stamps. I love using chunky stamps for this. Shake the SS up good, and put some in a small bowl or plate. Using a foam brush, apply a thin coat of the SS to your stamp. If there are detailed areas that get filled with the SS, use a tooth pick or q-tip to clean them out.

Step 4. Decide where you want the image, and press the stamp with the SS there. Continue stamping until you’ve done as much as you’d like. Within a few minutes, you should notice a change in color where you stamped the images with SS.

Step 5. Let the SS dry completely. Wash and dry the t-shirt.

      

The light green t-shirt and the purple t-shirt include stamp images from Red Castle, Inc. The black t-shirt and the two t-shirts below use chunky stamps from an unknown manufacturer.

VARIATIONS:

- at this point, you can go back in and paint detail on your t-shirt using fabric paints, or fabric dye stamp pads (such as Crafters or Fabrico, etc). Be sure to heat set the paints or dyes as directed

-STAMPED BLOCKS: instead of stamping the image with SS, you can use masking tape, and tape off areas of your t-shirt. Then, you can paint the SS directly on the t-shirt inside the masked off areas. When the SS is dry, remove the tape and wash and dry the shirt. This will give you areas on the shirt that can now be decorated. Using fabric paints or fabric stamp pads, you can paint images, or stamp images to the bleached out areas. Be sure to heat set paints or stamp pads as directed.

-STAMPED FRAMES: when you tape off areas, you can apply just a thin line of SS close to the masking tape. This will create a "frame" and then you can apply SS to a stamp and stamp in the center of the "frame".

-You can alternate "Stamped Blocks" and "Stamped Frames" on your shirt. Inside the Stamped Blocks. This gives an interesting effect.

You’re imagination is the limit. What I love about the SS is that it leaves your fabric feeling nice and soft, just the same as it started out.

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