Eraser Stamped Patriotic Shirts (Using Dollar Store Tees)

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The Fourth of July is one of my very favorite holiday's.  I love the parades, and the red, white, and blue, and the patriotic music, and the food and fireworks, and spending time with family.  This is a land that I love!

A few weeks when I was shopping I noticed the patriotic shirts on display.  As I was browsing through them I remembered that I had spied some t-shirts at the dollar store and thought it would be fun for my kids and I to make our own patriotic shirts for the fourth of July.  I mean for $1 why not?  Here is what we came up with inspired by this shirt that I saw at Target:






I love how they turned out and they were so simple to make.


First things first--I washed my shirts.  This is always a good idea so they can preshrink.  It also washes away any chemicals on the fabric from manufacturing which may prevent the paint from being permanent.  I still can't believe I snagged these tees at Dollar Tree! You really can't beat the prince for a fun craft project.  I was lucky to find one in each of my kids sizes and they even had some in my daughters size in a girl cut.  

To start out I traced and cut out a star from freezer paper.

I then placed the shinny side of the star onto the fabric and ironed it on using a medium setting.  Be sure to focus on the edges and points of the star.  Iron for about 30 seconds to a minute.  The first time I used freezer paper for a project I applied a lot of heat and and lot of pressure and I couldn't get the freezer paper to come off of my fabric when I was done. I ruined my project.  Less is more here, but at the same time you want to make sure the paper is completely ironed on so no paint seeps under.

I then mixed in some textile medium to my red and blue paint and used a new pencil eraser to stamp.  Be sure to place cardboard, wax paper, or freezer paper inside your shirt before you start stamping so the paint doesn't soak through to the back.

You really can't go wrong with the design.  I concentrated the dots more around the star and then spaced them out as I got further away from it.

Once the paint drys you can peel away the freezer paper and your shirt is done!

This project is very kid friendly.  My children had a blast making their very own fourth of July shirts.  Now they're busy making a bunch of red, white, and blue rainbow loom bracelets so once July fourth rolls around they'll have plenty of patriotic things to wear.

Cute kids.  Cute made-by-them shirts.

Since these dollar store shirts where such an incredible deal we grabbed a few more is different colors too.  Stay tuned to see what we made with those!