Lou has Ugly Sweater Day at school today! With the help of her best friend, they made the cutest ugly sweaters.
*****************************************************************
Before we get started, a quick Safety note: Bleach is a strong chemical that produces dangerous fumes and should be handled carefully! Gloves and proper ventilations are strongly recommended!
*****************************************************************
We took the sweater and placed a thin box to keep the bleach from bleeding through and saturating the other side. Luckily there is no one way to bleach a shirt, so we have the freedom to be as creative as we can imagine. We used the paintbrush method because we had to work inside due to the rainy weather. You dip the paintbrush into the bleach and draw the box's outline. Then slowly fill the box in with the bleach until it is completely saturated. Then we splattered bleach all over to make a cool "tie-dye" design.
Once the bleach is on the sweater, it is beneficial to help speed the bleaching process. A light source is helpful. Direct sunlight tends to work a little better, but we set it under a sun lamp since it was too cold and raining here. We did not want this sweater to be very white, just lightened some to the llama pop, so we only left it for a few hours. Once it has reached the desired lightness, you need to mist the sweater with hydrogen peroxide to stop the bleaching process. After it had dried, then we washed it without fabric softener.
Now that the shirt is clean, it is ready to decorate. Lou wanted a llama sweater REALLY BAD!! So, we found an image to download and printed it on iron-on transfer paper. Our Elves got the heat press set up but moved before we started heating it up. While it was heating up, we cut out Lou's llama and her best friend's T-Rex. Once they were cut out, we placed the image on the sweaters where we wanted it, covered it with the protective wax sheet, locked the press for 30 seconds. Let it cool for another 30 seconds. Then it is ready to add the decorations.
We had picked up some Christmas decorations from the dollar tree. Lou and her best friend arranged the decorations how they wanted them on their sweaters. Then his mom and I hot glued their pieces onto the sweaters.
These are the cutest ugly sweaters I have ever seen, if I do say so myself! They were so excited to wear them to school today!
Here is the link to the video:
Comments