100 Days of Freezer Paper Shirt...errr...or something like that...

I'm the kind of person who jumps into new crafts with both feet. And both arms. And my whole body.
And shakes it all about.
Anyway...
You know--
"Hey, I think I'll try knitting. I think I'll start with this hat....aaaand sweater to match."
"You know, I've always wanted to try cake decorating. Let me give these authentic gum paste flora the old college try. This looks totally do-able."
You get the drift. The term "start small"...yeah, not in my personal dictionary.
My kid's school celebrates the 100th day of school. Each grade does a different project featuring--you guessed it--100 things. When I found out that this year the Kindergarteners were all going to need a shirt with 100 things on it, I thought, "Cool, perfect time to try out freezer paper stenciling!"
Aaaaannd...in typical fashion, rather than start here:


I started here:



Ha. Haha.
Okay, so I've been wanting to try freezer paper stenciling for a while. Especially after seeing all the awesome stuff happening over at Lil' Blue Boo (like this) and this over at the Artful Parent. Awesome, right?
So I broke down and finally bought the freezer paper--which was alot for me, considering that it was almost $6. (I am also the cheapest crafter you will ever meet) Although from the looks of the box, I will probably have enough freezer paper to last until the end of time.

(That's totally a real horse that fortunately happened to be galloping by, just to give you an idea of perspective)

This was tough, because I am shooting for something that may possibly have hope of being decent looking...something that could get worn again, not thrown away.
I decided on a floral design, kind of coming up from the hem and thinning out as it gets to the top. And I'd like to do back and front, after all, we're talking about 100 flowers. 100 flowers!!! And she's not a very big girl!
I let Tiny Tim pick a shirt color and fabric paint color. And then we picked out some little jewels to put in the center of flower.

(As you can maybe tell by the color choices, its rapidly loosing its ability to be considered "decent looking...not thrown away." But I try very hard not to take over my kid's craft projects, and let them express their creative...uh, choices. So hot pink and sparkly blue with multicolored jewels it is. Who am I to stifle such instinct??? If I can let them smush all the playdoh colors together--the horror! Its like nails on a chalkboard to me!--I can totally make a blindingly multicolored jewel-y shirt. Although I reserve my right to tone it down with black stems and leaves. A mother can only be pushed so far, ya'll.)

Anyway, here goes:
I basically followed the instructions found here and here. But if you google it, you'll find a gazillion different tutorials that all basically say the same thing. (And yes, that is an exact number--google said 1.8 gazillion results returned) The only difference is that I'm doing it in two seperate steps, with two different colors (you read that whole intro about my over-complication of everything, right?)

First the "background" of stems and leaves. I freehanded the design straight on to the freezer paper with a pen. Then comes all the tedious cut out. Here's the stencil ironed on one side:

Once I painted in the black, I decided to do the sleeves too--first because I thought it would look cute, and the added benefit of giving me a bit more room to squeeze on 100 flowers!!! Did I mention, 100 flowers!!! And 2 fingerprint butterflies. So maybe we'll do 98 flowers. Afterall, it just had to be 100 "things".

So, here's the finished product, Part 1. (the little smudges are future butterfly bodies made of Tiny Tim's fingerprints)


We'll let it dry overnight, so its nice and ready for the 100 flowers!!! I mean, possibly 98 flowers!!!

P.S.--I am sooo loving the shirt just like this. I may have found a new favorite craft.