Because acrylic paint does­n’t come off clothes.

So I thought, why not paint a shirt with it? I had a cou­ple of plain white t‑shirts that I’m wait­ing to refash­ion, and one day I saw some­one wear­ing a shirt with water­coloury stripes, so I thought I could just dilute acrylic paint and make it look all watery. It was acrylic paint from a dol­lar store too :D

Oh yes, and it was one of those Hanes white under­shirts. I cut off the col­lar and the sleeve cuffs before paint­ing it.

Because the paint is so watery, it soaks in all at once as soon as the brush touch­es the shirt, mak­ing it all blotchy-look­ing. I even­tu­al­ly devel­oped a method of paint­ing the shirt with a line of plain water first, then went over with paint. It made the paint flow better.

I let the paint­ed shirt dry and then put it direct­ly into the wash. Did­n’t rinse it or iron it to heat-set the colour. I guess I just had a feel­ing that the acrylic is going to stay put.

And I’m glad I was right, because I real­ly had no idea. But the paint did­n’t run in the wash, it did­n’t colour any of the oth­er stuff blue, it did­n’t even fade much (it just looked lighter when it was dried) Suc­cess! :D

The shorts were also refash­ioned from a pair of hand-me-down jeans that did­n’t look very good on me. I just cut off most of the pant legs and rolled the cuffs. I haven’t worn shorts since I was in grade school. Not that I did­n’t like them, I just did­n’t buy new ones after I out­grew the ones from child­hood. But because this sum­mer is warmer than usu­al I thought about mak­ing some shorts. Mike said they make me look taller :D

I real­ized that I cut too much off the col­lar, so I had to take in the shoul­ders and sleeves after­ward. But it made a real­ly cool chevron pat­tern :D

Hope you’ve had a good start to the week!