My daughter is a big crafter. She loves it all...scrapbooking, coloring, drawing, writing stories, fuse beads, making jewelry, sculpty clay, baking, everything. Her and I were looking through a kids craft website trying to get some new ideas. And we ran across these shirts...Solar Flare shirts. She immediately wanted to make them so we gathered up what we needed and ran with it.
What you need:
1. White t-shirt
2. Fabric spray paint
3. 1 cup Flour
4. Measuring cup
5. cardboard
6. squeeze bottle
We got the shirts, fabric spray paint, and squeeze bottle at Michael's. Now this is an all day project. There are long stretches of time where you have to let things dry. I had to temper my kids expectations a little bit, these aren't going to be finished in 20 minutes.
Ready to see our shirts come to life? Okay...here we go!
Put the cardboard between the layers of your shirt.
Put 1 cup of flour into a big measuring cup. Add enough water to make a paste that will be fluid enough to squeeze from a squeeze bottle, but not too drippy.
Add the flour/water mix to a squeeze bottle. Let your kids squeeze out their design on the front of the shirt. I had my kids draw out the design on paper first, just to get them thinking about it. Otherwise I'm sure the designs would have been all over the place. Keep the squeeze bottle low to the shirt and squeeze slowly.
Once your designs are all complete, lay the shirts in the sun for about 4 hours. The flour/water designs need to dry completely. My daughter insisted they were dry after about 20 minutes, but you really need to let it dry!
After the designs are totally dry, you are ready for the fabric spray paint!
These spray bottles were super easy to use. Pick your colors and start spraying your shirts directly over the flour design.
Now...let that dry. Pure torture for my kids to have to sit through another drying phase. Luckily, we had popsicles while we waited. Once the paint is dry, you need to peel off all the flour. This wasn't super easy. We had to bend the flour designs so they cracked, then peel the hard flour. My kids were very patient with it and actually did a great job getting all the flour off.
The goal is for the design to pop off the newly colored shirt. What do you think?
Kayla's shirt turned out better and I think it's because she wasn't so heavy handed with the spray paint. She did more of a light spray while Kevin really saturated his shirt with the spray paint. Next time I would have him go easier with the paint. But they both really loved how they turned out!! Kevin's looks more like a tie-dye shirt and he thinks it's cool you have to find the hidden design.
So there you have it, Solar Flare shirts. It was a really fun craft and my kids had a ball. Let me know if you try it with your kids!!
