Tardis Bleach Resist Shirt

One of my daughter's BFFs was having a birthday and he is obsessed with Dr. Who.  I made him this T-shirt using Pazzles vinyl and a bleach resist technique. I made two. One for my daughter and one for him. My daughter doesn't really watch Dr. Who but she wanted to walk into school with it on to see what his reaction would be before he knew he was getting one.  It was a funny sight to see..lol  

The teachers saw it and loved it. Next week is space week and each classroom was assigned a planet. Sooooo I will be using this technique to make each of them a t-shirt with their assigned planet on it. I think they are going to be cool. 

Here are some loose directions...tee hee

First I found a Tardis image that I liked on line and traced it using my Pazzles Pro software. 

Then I cut the Tardis out using permanent vinyl. I used transfer tape to transfer the cut out image to my shirt. I pressed it down really hard, to be sure it was stuck to the shirt.  I even used a rolling pin to be sure I got all the edges. I peeled the transfer tape off and ran my finger firmly over the more detailed parts of the design, just to be sure. 

I put the shirt on a platen so the bleach would not soak through to the back. A big piece of cardboard will work just as well. 

Then I just sprayed it with a bleach cleaner. I know you can use a mixture of water and bleach but the bleach cleaner was handy and worked great.  I used a misting bottle. You can get one at Walmart in the travel section. Then I used a larger sprayer to get larger drops so it looked like stars.  

Don't get to close to the shirt when you are spraying the bleach. You don't want to soak it or the bleach will get under the vinyl.  Also it takes a few mins for the bleach to take effect. At first it looks like nothing is happening then right before your very eyes you start seeing it work. I recommend that you spray several light coats and us a blow dryer between each coat. It worked great this way and I got some incredible details. 

I originally tried it out on an old t-shirt using contact paper and it didn't seem to work as well as the vinyl. I don't think it was as sticky enough so it didn't get clean edges like I did when I used the vinyl.

** Bonus Hint...If you do get some bleeding under your vinyl you can use a black laundry marker to clean it up. Of course this only works if you are using a black shirt. But it helps if you get a little crazy with the bleach spraying...lol