What can we make with magazines after we've finished reading them? Collages, paper chains, books, a variety of learning and literacy games and activities—so much! But how about clothing? Our family has now added designing our own t-shirts to the list. We all worked on these over the weekend and are very happy with the shirts we've revamped and added back to our closets.
This project is in response to the December TinkerLab challenge—"create with magazines". Here's how we made our custom T-shirts (and how you can make some, too!):
Materials:
- Magazine(s)
- Scissors
- T-shirt(s)
- Glue stick and copy paper (optional)
- Printable transfer paper (we used PrintWorks brand for dark T-shirts)
- Iron
- Access to a color copier (home or Kinko's, etc)
Step 1: Gather your magazines. Our stack included old issues of Your Big Backyard and National Geographic Little Kids, two nature-oriented kid mags that we've enjoyed.
Step 2: Cut out images that appeal. Maia cut out a large stack of animal pictures. Daphne made multiple cuts around a couple of pictures.
And Harry and I cut out some out as well.
Step 3: Match up magazine images with T-shirts. Maia had a lot of fun moving around her pictures, appropriating ours, and creating different arrangements.
Step 4: Glue the images to paper backing with a dab from a glue stick. This step isn't strictly necessary, but we found it helpful for Maia to assemble the images that she wanted to group together and to keep them intact on the way to the copy machine.
Step 5: Copy the magazine images onto the photo transfer paper, following the directions on the package. (Note: the photo transfer paper is rather expensive at $11 for a package of 5. I buy mine when I have a 50% off coupon at AC Moore or Michaels.)
Step 6: Trim around your image on the special transfer paper. You can leave a white margin, as here, if you like, or trim flush with the image.
Step 7: Match up your images with your T-shirts once again. Maia arranged and rearranged a fair amount.
Step 8: Peel the paper backing off the transfer paper image (see upper right hand corner) and place on T-shirt in desired location.
Step 9: Iron on the image following package directions. Mine included special paper to cover the image while ironing, but found that parchment paper works well as a substitute if you, say, rip your paper by mistake.
Step 10: Try on your new T-shirt and admire! Maia made several shirts, as you can see. Daphne, Harry, and I all have new shirts as well (polar bear, tree frog, and elephant respectively).
This is a very simple project, despite the steps involved. Besides being good for self-expression, it might be fun for a child to make one as a gift for a sibling or cousin, using images of whatever they are into (unicorns, spiderman, etc)...
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Now that you've seen our response to TinkerLab magazine challenge, go check out what the other participants have come up with!
