For about $5 and 30 minutes of my time, I created this custom Steemit shirt, and I am going to teach you how to do the same. Ever since diving into Steemit, I have been wanting some custom gear. If you don't want to pay other companies a lot of money for custom shirts, you can make your own on the cheap using bleach.
First, you are going to want to gather materials.
Here's what you'll need:
1. Cotton t-shirt of your choosing. Cotton works the best from what i have found, and I picked up this darker blue shirt at Target for 3 bucks. You will want to stick with darker colors for obvious reasons.
2. Cardboard sheet (to line the inside of the shirt)
3. Freezer paper ( I had to buy this, and I previously had no idea what it was. Look in the aluminum foil aisle)
4. Spray bottle of any size
5. Household Bleach
6. Sharp craft knife
7. Pen/Pencil
8. Paper towels
9. Iron
10. ironing board (optional)
Most of those items you probably already have around the house, but even if you have to buy things, they should all be fairly cheap. The first step is deciding on your Steemit design. I just grabbed the Steemit logo off Google as I thought it would look nice blown up on a t-shirt. I borrowed my wife's iPad and used it to trace using a pencil (or pen) the design onto the freezer paper. You will want to put the shiny and plastic-y side down and draw on the more opaque side. You can see how I did this below.
Once the design is completely transferred to the freezer paper, you can cut out around the design leaving plenty of clearance. No need to be neat or precise at this point.
After cutting the drawn design out, you will want to determine exactly where on the shirt you would like the logo to be. I decided on the center and used a small piece of scotch tape to hold it in place. Place the shiny side against the fabric, and the side with the design drawn on facing up.
Once in place, it's time to get out your iron and iron on the paper. Don't use steam, it will affect how the paper sticks to the fabric. Iron it on just like you would an iron on decal. The paper will stick.
Once your design blank is ironed on, it is time to get out your craft knife. Make sure it is sharp and fine. If you are careful, you should have no problem cutting out the designs. Take your time, as I found after making the first cut, it was hard to go back and adjust.
I cut the designs out after I ironed on the design, but in hindsight, it may have been easier to cut the designs out then iron them on. If you want to try this, I may recommend it as cutting out the details on the fabric took some patience. Once the design is cut out, go back over it with an iron to make sure it is sealed to the fabric.
For my design, I wanted the logo and the word "steemit" to be white, and for the shirt to maintain the original color. You could change this up and invert the design. It might look cool in a 'negative' version where you splatter bleach creating white splatter marks and solid designs. Customize as you would like.
Now that the design is completely cut out, it's time to decide if you want to make different layers of whiteness. Since the middle part of the Steemit logo is lighter, I wanted to try and make it stand out in the final product. To do this, I covered everything else up and gave it an extra treatment of bleach spray.
To make the bleach spray, you will need your spray bottle, the bleach, and a sink. Pour a little bit of bleach into the bottle, and add an equal amount of water. Be careful not to get the bleach on your hands, and I would recommend doing this in a sink or outside. Stick to about a 50/50 ratio. I added a little more water than bleach, and I found that it caused the design to bleed a little bit because the fabric got too wet.
Shake up the spray bottle filled with bleach well, and you are ready to begin treating the shirt. I didn't get a picture of it, but I treated the middle of the logo first, then did the whole thing. You can kind of tell since the middle is just a little more pink. Make sure you cover the rest of the shirt well. I would recommend taping everything down. When the bleach is sprayed it can get everywhere. I sprayed outside to keep the house smelling good and not like bleach.
After each spray, you will want to immediately blot out the bleach with a paper towel. The goal here is to not let the shirt get saturated, and not let the spray soak into the fabric. If you were to let it soak in, the final design will bleed and won't look precise. Repeat the spray until you are happy with the color and design. Grab a spare t-shirt to cover your mouth, or use a respirator while spraying. You DO NOT want to breathe in the bleach mist.
Once you are happy with your shirt, quickly run it under warm water to stop the bleaching reaction. This also helps to set the design. You will want to peel off the remaining freezer paper at this point too. To spice up the shirt a little bit, I sprayed it with bleach after removing all of the paper, but that is sheer matter of preference.
Make it your own!
In the end, my design bled a little more than I would have liked. To fix this, when the shirt was wet, I went back in and outlined in a black sharpie to clean it up, and I think it turned out nicely.
Hopefully this was helpful, and taught you how to make your very own custom Steemit gear! Theoretically. you could use this method to make any kind of shirt design, not only limited to Steemit. If you take your time, you can get a really precise and professional print with this method.
GIVEAWAY: I am going to be doing a random giveaway of one of these custom shirts. I will custom make one with the Steemit design of your choosing in any size, and mail it to you. If you want to be entered, comment below. I will be using mini Web Tool to randomly select a winner. I'll select the winner after the first payout and I will contact you by replying to your comment.