Way back in ancient times, when I was getting married, I thought it would be wonderful to have custom apparel for our bridal parties (yes... guys included). But there was one huge problem with this scenario: cost. Sure custom embroidery and screen printing looks great, but there was no way I had the funds or means to do something "extra" like that as a graduate student planning a wedding.

In order to fulfill my desires, I went ahead an found a way to buy cheap shirts at wholesale prices and DIY my screenprinting, and 2 years later, people are still sporting around their t-shirts & tanks around town.



(Details on the ROSE tank tops can be found here, and the TEAM t-shirts here)

Recently, I stumbled into a couple other fun methods of making t-shirt designs: bleach & crayons! In case you're interested, here are some more details on the process and the outcome:

1) Bleach (via a Clorox Bleach Pen)

First, I picked out a bold b/w graphic that I wanted to use: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. But the problem was that my image was only big enough to fit on an 8×11″ sheet of paper… and I kind of wanted something a little bit bigger. In order to enlarge it quickly and easily (as opposed to chopping layers on photoshop), I used blockposters and quadrupled its size. I printed out the images on 4 pieces of vellum, and taped them together to recreate the image.

Then I quickly cut out off the excess paper (still leaving a good sized border) and taped down marking areas for where I’d like the design on the shirt. I ended up inking the design in 3-passes  (top, bottom left & bottom right) so I made sure to put down good marks for where the pieces of paper needed to be laid back down.

I used plastic sheets inside of the shirt to prevent any bleeding, but you can easily use magazines or cardboard as well.

Then — I got to bleaching!  For this project, I used a Clorox bleach pen (sorry for the lack of photos of “in process crafting” — the bleach was making me tear up a little bit), which you can find in your laundry soap aisle. I flipped the design over and basically just traced the lines in bleach, then laid it back down on the shirt and pressed down the vellum.

Here’s what the first pass (top half) looked like:

I went ahead and did the same thing with all three sections, and then waited for the design to dry:

I used a hair dryer to set the bleach (about 5 extra minutes of drying after  I had laid down the last piece), and then rinsed out the shirt underneath the shower. Once it was rung dry, I put it in the dryer for 30 minutes to set the design up.

And in the end, I came out with this:

Now while it might not be instantly recognizable as Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, I think it’s a pretty fun artistic interpretation of it… thanks to bleach bleeding, air bubbles and my desire to be a bit more detailed than I should have been with the design.  I was kind of operating off the cuff, since I’ve never seen anyone try and use a template to transfer the bleach. Next time around, I think I’ll invest in some stainless steel applicator tips (as recommended by Martha) to ensure more consistency with the bleech, maybe use a sheet of transparency paper instead of vellum, and leave the detail as an afterthought to fill in the design, rather than putting it on the template.

#2: CRAYON!
I had seen these fabric Crayola crayons in the sewing section previously, promising that you could iron any design you drew on paper onto fabric! Well, after reading some reviews online, it sounded pretty darn neat to me, so I decided to give it a whirl.

For this project, I figured a plain ‘ol Mickey Mouse design would work well. I was hoping I could wear the shirt under a cardigan/open sweatshirt, so an easy center design was best as well. I printed out this Mickey design on vellum (probably not the best thing to use, but I was short on time as far as positioning was concerned), flipped it over.

I traced the outline I wanted and then filled in the black parts with purple. Lots of crayon shavings went awry (probably due to the vellum), but I was still able to color quite heavily.

After coloring, I flipped the design over again, and ironed it down on my shirt for about a minute on the cotton setting.

When I peeled up the design, I ended up with this:

It’s definitely a very light transfer of Mickey, but I think it works out great. Kind of like a sketched out piece of artwork… but not as obvious as a screen print. The down side of this shirt is that it's not supposed to be "dried in a dryer" -- and I'm not sure if I want to test out the warning to see if it's true or not. It would be great on a tote bag or something else that wouldn't be washed though!!!

So hopefully you'll get some creative ideas from these methods and be able to DIY yourself some fun wares for your VIPs. Oh... if you need those discount prices on shirts, try jiffyshirts.com or trendyblanks.com (for American Apparel).

 
When I went to Roswell, NM to attend the wedding of my BM Meagan, the last thing I thought I'd be doing was eating gumbo on a Friday night. I thought we'd be hanging out with the aliens and chatting it up with the cowboys, so when I arrived for the rehearsal dinner, I was shocked to be suddenly transported to a southern plantation. It was, however, perfectly fitting for the groom's celebration, since he is a Roswell-transplant via Louisiana.


(The sheep watched us dine from beyond the fence)



The tables were set-up on the front lawn of the estate, with the catering stations on the side. And, by catering, I mean home-cooked fixin's that were provided by generous family friends.



Each table was set immaculately with colorful napkins, candle holders, and of course, BBQ bibs.  Plus, Meagan got to use the gerber daisies that she loves so dearly... and that her florist outlawed at the wedding. ;)



And you can't forget the Louisiana hot sauce! One per table seemed to do the trick!



Bibs on everyone.... time to chow down!



And then there was the food!!! While my tastebuds couldn't handle all of the spicy goodness the gumbo and shrimp had to offer, everyone at the table was "ooohing" and "awwwing" over it. I stuck to the hushpuppies and macaroni. And the mojitos. :)



See... those bibs do come in handy!



Desserts were, again, provided by family friends. The strawberries (soaked in Grand Marnier) were wonderful atop ice cream, along with the cookies and lemon bars.


It turned out to be the perfect summer night, and the ideal way to get ready for the celebration on Saturday!


The lucky couple even got the chance to sneak in some early dancing.

In all, they pulled off the perfect welcome reception for their family and friends visiting from near and afar. I mean, they did have to go and top it with a fireworks display the next night... but regardless it was a flawless rehearsal celebration.



Cheers of milk back to the happy couple of Meagan and Ian! (Seriously... how cute is this! Toasting with milk for the cake cutting? Adorable!)

The new All Heart stamp is out from USPS today!
   
Also making their debut are this year's wedding stamp duo (42 and 59 cents respectively).

What if... ..
your biggest fear about getting married wasn't about fitting into your dress, or making sure all of the pew bows were tied properly, or that that you'd remember the choreographed dance steps to your first dance? I wish I could say that my mind was preoccupied with programs and favors and ribbons (oh my!) but unfortunately it wasn't as simple... it was all about NOT being sick on my wedding day.

I was hesitant to write about this before the wedding, mainly because I wanted to avoid any sort of loyal attention to the subject. Certainly wishful thinking would come through on the big day as long as I kept happily not-thinking about the big "s" word happening... and I have a feeling that I'm not the only one out there to battle chronic illness and have the same thoughts floating in my head.

Just to clairfy, I, along with 3-6% of the US population, suffer from fibromyalgia. I was diagnosed 10 years ago when I was 17 when my athletic body melted into uncontrollable pain and spasms, and I've been fighting to ignore the pain everyday since then. My pain is mostly in my neck and upper back, and while everyday my muscles are rock hard and I'm constantly stretching and popping things, on bad days I can't get out of bed as my pain migrates to other areas to inflict harm on new territory. Lots of other fun stuff comes along with the FMS, like tension migraines and IBS, but the suffering really comes from the day-to-day struggle to just keep moving and shrugging off the pain.

My personal history with chronic illness has shown that I always make it through the stressful events in my life, such as final exams, job interviews, performances, etc., but sadly I usually collapse into a heap hours later to awake from a fog days later. My big worry was that I would survive the actual wedding ceremony, but the second I started to let loose on the dance floor, I'd start to feel weak. Or perhaps I'd be fine all day but have a horrible honeymoon on account of the preceding weeks of stress. Let's just say I had plenty to worry about, and there really wasn't much I could do but have things around to make sure I was comfortable, relaxed and out of pain.

So I did my best to plan that things went well, everywhere from avoiding all caffeine all day long and making sure that I bought a wedding dress that sat on my rib cage and hips instead of draping on my neck and shoulders. And in the end.... I survived. In the follow-up to this post, I'll go through of what I did to "set-up" for success... but for now, I just want to leave all of those worrisome brides with a glimmer of hope... that someone who wanted to be anything but her sick self during her wedding made it through with flying colors!

Perhaps the responses to this post will help realize that we're not alone out there and that others are facing the same BIG issues... and I hope everyone has as much "healthy luck" as I did on my big day! So good luck to my fellow sickies out there... I'll be personally cheering you on from the other side!

When Mr. Lemon and I visited our reception hall the first time we were simply fixated on the windows and the view. The second time around, we focused in on the details... and there was a glaring problem that we had right when you walked off of the elevator:



Now I'm all for celebrating Monterey's fishing history (despite the way my Dad describes the afternoon stench of the city in the 40s & 50s), but seeing those photos on the wall doesn't exactly scream, "Let's Celebrate!" Mr. Lemon examined the photos only to learn that they were quite bolted to the wall which meant they couldn't be tucked away and stored in the coat closet. He left me with the task of eliminating them from the reception and I let my mind wander toward a solution.

My solution was all quite simple. I decided to make a wooden frame that would sit on top of the canvas boxed photos on the wall, cover it with some sort of canvas material and slap on our favorite engagement photos in poster sizes. The frame would be light enough not to damage the photo underneath, and the fish (along with the giant mug shot of Mr. Ferrantes) would be hidden from view!



The wood to build the frame cost around $5 and I found some white interior decorating fabric for about $6. We stretched the fabric and stapled it to the frame (just like you'd stretch a normal canvas), but we decided it still needed an extra touch. We taped off a border on each canvas and painted it gold, leaving a bit of white inside to center the poster. I had the posters printed at El-Co Color Labs while they were running a 2-for-1 special, so it was around $22 for all four posters. We attached the posters to the fabric using foam wall tape and they were ready for the reception!


 
(gotta LOVE the metallic print paper... it does amazing things with sunset prints!)