Fantastic Fireworks Shirts

I honor of July 4th the kids, cousins and I made Fireworks t-shirts. I had gotten the idea from the Family Fun website and magazine. On the website they even have an instructional video. We also made these with my MOPS group last summer as a summer MOPS play date and swim at our old house. As the kids were making theirs this year I could help but remember last years t-shirt making and missing all my friends back in Columbus.

I used acrylic paint for the shirt. I find that it is thinner than most fabric paints but stays on well even with washing and drying. All three kids still have their shirts from last year and they still look like the day we made them. This year I also bought glow in the dark fabric paint and added it on top of the acrylic after it dried. With this addition it is important to wash your shirt inside out and the pre-set the paint before wearing by throwing it into the dryer inside out for about 15 minutes. I forgot to turn the girls' shirt inside out and we lost some of their glow in the dark paint from it sticking together. The only other supplies you will need are pipe cleaners, paper or plastic paint, star stamps ( I used these for the glow in the dark paint for a little surprise.) and wipes, lots of wipes, especially with little ones. For the pipe cleaners you cut them in half and then fold it it half and twist the top for a little handle. You could leave it whole and have a bigger handle for gripping, but this worked well for us. Also, in the picture I have the glittery pipe cleaners instead to the fuzzy ones. These did not work as well as the fuzzy ones. They just didn't hold the paint as well. In fact I chased down the fuzzy ones and made new stamps. The great thing about this is that it is easy enough for ages 2-100 to do successfully.


Here are several pictures of the kids making their shirt and then several more of them sporting them.








And for the finished project. Sorry, I tried to get some decent pictures of them glow in the dark but that just didn't work out. But here are the kids in their fancy duds posing for a few pictures.

The girl on the bottom in the middle is Rachel. She is my sister's kids awesome babysitter. She has watched all the kids without batting an eye and is so good with them all. She is also the one who has done all the face painting. The kids love Miss Rachel and she was willing to be the bottom of the pyramid since we didn't have enough kids!







I hope that everyone had a Happy and Safe 4th of July. And I want to say Thank you for all the service men and women who have had or are fighting for our freedom!!

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!