Summer Art Project - Sharpie Tie Dying

There's always some kind of art project going on at my house!  My kids are so used to it that it has become a challenge for me to find things to get them excited about.  My daughter, Lauren, and her friend, Grace, got excited about these shirts!

We've tie dyed several times so that was sort of done.  However, both girls love anything with their name or monogram on it.  Tie dying your name was something new and they were both up for it.  I got the idea from seeing where someone had colored on an old pair of Keds with a sharpie and then sprayed it with alcohol.  All of the colors blended together in a tie dye effect.  I wondered if it would apply to shirts and if names would work.  Hmmm....

We bought t-shirts in the craft section at Wal-Mart for $3.47 each.  We came home and cleaned out all of our drawers and old markers for permanent ones.  I did the names with a black Sharpie in dots.  (They had used dots on the shoes and it looked good!)  The girls chose their colors and patterns and went to work.  Lauren did what I would do.  She used blues and greens and went around her name in a regular pattern.  Grace used every color in random dots and sizes.

Once you've got your design perfected, just spray it with alcohol.  I purposely wanted the design to bleed onto the back.  If you don't want that, you need to put cardboard inside the shirt while coloring and spraying.

The colors start to spread out and mix with each other!  It's a slow process and takes some patience, but was really cool to watch!

Keep spraying!

Here's the Grace shirt just about finished.  I'm not a big fan of orange, but these orange dots mixed in with the blue ones was just gorgeous!  Let the shirts dry completely out in the sun and then wash by themselves the first time.  They did fade a little in the wash, but all in all it was an inexpensive, easy, and fun art project!