Mother’s day is coming up, and one of our Stencil1 designers had the sweet idea to make a custom shirt for her Mom. In this tutorial, we will go through how to use our flower stencils on a cotton cami. Follow along or use it as inspiration for your own piece!
Pick out which shirt you would like to customize. Make sure it’s cleaned and freshly ironed.
Use our Stencil Style 101 book to select which stencil you will use. We settled on our flower stencils, but you may use what tickles your fancy.
Figure out where on the shirt you want to place your flowers. Keep in mind how clothes will look like when worn, so avoid awkward placements! If you need to, you can hold the stencil up in a mirror to figure it out, or even make a little sketch.
Once decided, tape down your stencil. This is to make sure it doesn’t slide and mess up your work.
Get your paint ready. You don’t need too much, and make sure to keep the colors separate from each other. When you’re going to add paint to your brush, take off as much paint as possible.
Remember: You can always add more paint to your stencil, but you can’t take paint away.
Start stippling your brush onto the fabric. Focus on the center, leaving space around. When adding on paint for your first application, less is more!
Switch to an analogous color to add dimension– we used magenta followed by orange. Be light around the edges of your flower to give it a faded/ watercolor effect.
When complete, carefully lift up your stencil. Notice how the edges of the flower seem to be faded? You can achieve this effect by using less paint around the perimeter.
Keep adding more flowers to your shirt to fill your heart’s content. (Note: If you want to use the inverse side of a stencil, take a bit of dish soap and a paper towel, and wipe your stencil before reuse, so as to not get unwanted paint on your design.)
¡Qué hermoso! Take a heat blowdryer and point it at your flowers for a couple of seconds to merge seal the paint onto the fabric.
So cute. Get a nice giftbag or box to complete your gift. Presentation makes everything come together! Happy Mother’s Day ya’ll.
¡Feliz Día de las Madres!~
