Butterfly Love Shirt

I love the look of a faded graphic t-shirt especially when it's personalized for my girl. 
Purple? Check. 
Butterflies? Check. 
Glitter? Check. 
Super long lashes? Check.

Last week, Happy Hour Projects had a great tutorial on  how to make a graphic using freezer paper and bleach. So using that tutorial, I made this shirt and took it a step further... x 3.

I started with a regular purple shirt.  I traced the butterflies onto the freezer paper, cut and ironed onto the shirt. I purposely ironed the butterflies over the sleeves...

I lightly sprayed bleach onto the shirt...just enough to get the fabric wet...and by total accident, a couple of drops of bleach fell onto the bottom of the shirt...in the end, it worked in my favor. Make sure to insert cardboard or plastic bags into your shirt to protect the back of the shirt...you don't want bleach to stain that part.

When it was dry, it looked like this

When I removed the butterflies, it looked like this...see how the accidental drops of bleach worked in my favor...looks like butterfly dust as they flutter about.

I liked it but it was missing something...so then I did this...using freezer paper, I traced and cut out the word LOVE.  Ironed on the stencil and proceeded to paint the letters using several fabric paint colors. I painted and blended in the colors over each other.  Once the paint was dry, I went back and repainted the letters again using fabric glitter paint.

Then it looked like this...I forgot to take a picture of the shirt without the hearts, but basically, the shirt still looked too blah at the top.  So I drew and cut out heart stencils using freezer paper.  When I ironed them on, the white fade from the bleach turned yellow... :(  I painted the hearts in just like the letters.

I wasn't loving the yellow "glow" in the middle.  In my attempt to "cover up" the yellow, I added more sparkle to the shirt with glitter fabric paint.  I just dabbed on some glitter dots and smeared them with the paint brush. 

Now the shirt looked like this

 Now the shirt looks like this...much better

After washing it in a regular load, the yellow came off...whew.

And this is what the shirt looks like when Sammie is in model mode...

Work it girl!