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Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

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DIY Disney Tie-Dye Shirts

When I found out my kids were going to Disneyland, I knew I wanted to make them personalized t-shirts to help break the surprise.

I thought about doing something hand-appliqued, but who am I kidding?  I did not have time for that.

Then I thought about doing a tie-dye shirt for each of the kids, but I wanted to keep myself on budget and I didn’t have dyes on hand.  Also, I thought it would be hard to hide a tie-dye operation from the children.

That’s when I remembered a project I did with some kids I used to babysit.  We made reverse tie-dyed shirts using bright t-shirts and bleach.  I thought I could do a variation of reverse tie-dye to create personalized shirts for each of the kids.

First, I stopped at Michael’s craft store and picked up three t-shirts.  They were out of most colors so I had to settle for neon.  It felt so…’80’s.  But I consoled myself with thoughts of the big ol’ bottle of bleach waiting for me at home.

Once the kids were in bed and I had threatened to take away all of their stuffed animals if they set foot downstairs, I got to work.

First, I created a Mickey Mouse template.  

DIY Mickey Mouse Shirts

If you’re uncomfortable making a template on your own, just search for “Mickey Mouse silhouette” and you’ll find lots of printable options.  I just didn’t want to to waste the ink.

Yes, I am that cheap.

I traced around the Mouse with a white crayon.  You could use chalk or a fabric pencil if you have one on hand.  But white crayons are in abundance around here because how often can you use a white crayon?

Next, I created my own bleach pen.

Bleach pens are basically bleach in gel form.  You can get them at the grocery store in the laundry aisle.

But, I didn’t want to spend $3.50 on a bleach pen because I am my father’s daughter, and I have distinct memories of him telling the clerk at McDonald’s that it couldn’t possibly cost eight dollars to purchase hamburgers and water for a family of five.

Besides, I thought I could make my own for just pennies.  It turns out, I could.

I had an empty plastic bottle with a tip–you know, the kind you might use for ketchup and mustard.  I use mine for frosting cookies.  Into that bottle, I poured about an inch of liquid hand soap and about a tablespoon of bleach.  Swish, swish, swish, and wallah!  Bleach pen.

I tested the bleach pen on a piece of cardboard just to make sure it was “gelled” enough.  I wanted my bleach pen to be a little runny, just enough to give the t-shirts a paint-splattered look.

I slid a piece of cardboard in between the layers of each t-shirt so the bleach wouldn’t bleed to the back.

Finally, I traced around the crayon outline with the bleach pen.

DIY Bleach Pen

I created a nice, fat outline.  As you can see, the bleach didn’t bleed much, even though I didn’t mind if it did a little.

DIY Disney shirts

I actually had to create a “bleed” by dabbing the pen around a bit.  I didn’t want it to look perfect.

Also, I wanted each shirt to look different, so I made splattered look on Jonathan’s shirt, and polka dots on Kya’s.

DIY Disney shirts

I wanted to create tiger stripes on Faith’s, but her shirt was WAY committed to being neon pink.  I had to stop and make a stronger bleach slurry, but it barely touched the color on that shirt.  The lines faded enough to give me an outline, so I decided I’d have to go back and add some glitter paint to try to make it stand out like the others.

DIY Disney shirts

As you can see, Faith’s Tiger Minnie is struggling because that hot pink is fierce.

Let the bleach pen work until the shirts are faded to the color you want.  Remove the cardboard.  It will look really cool and you will like it:

DIY Disney shirts

Bleach pen + cardboard = wood burned effect? Fabulous!

Rinse the shirts in the sink to carefully remove the bleach without getting it everywhere.  Then, wash and dry the shirts.  This is how Jonathan’s looked, straight out of the dryer.  You can see the tie-dye look in the white.

Bleach Pen Disney Shirts

Lastly, add any embellishments you’d like.

I had to add some glitter paint to Faith’s shirt because the lines were just too faint on her Minnie Mouse.  I happened to have some fabric paint on hand so I just used what I had.  Thankfully, it dried quickly because this girl was still working on these shirts on the day of departure.  No stress!  No stress!

I wanted the girls’ shirts to have bows on the ears so it would be clear they were Minnie Mouse shirts, not Mickey Mouse shirts.

Kya’s got an over-sized variegated ribbon on the ear.

Bleach Pen Disney Shirts

It’s SO Kya.

I struggled a bit more with Faith’s because she doesn’t like bows on her person.  She’s a tween, what can I say?  Actually, she’s never been a fan of bows.  She gets that from her mother.  Ahem.

Also, I didn’t have a ribbon I liked.  I wished I had something leopard-spotted, but I didn’t.  I didn’t even have any black ribbon, which also would have looked neat.  I dug around in my ribbon bin and that’s when I saw the perfect solution: a black zipper.

I separated the zipper and turned it into an edgy-bow.  The teeth of the zipper looked great with the gold glitter paint I was forced to use on the tiger stripes.  I added a little bling to the center and it was done.

While I didn’t love the way the tiger stripes turned out, I did love the bow.  It was perfect for Faith–not too girly, not too grown-up.

Bleach Pen Disney Shirts

All in all, I loved the way they came out.  The kids said people stopped them at Disney to comment on their shirts.  I should have written “Five in Tow” on the backs.  Can you say “missed advertising opportunity”?

Bleach Pen Disney Shirts

Here they are, ready to fly to Disney!

Disneyland!

Nana, Uncle Fred, Aunt Lavonne, Faith, Jonathan, and Kya, ready to head to Disney!

Next time, I’ll make shirts for all of them!

Crafts, Parenting 11 Comments

A Disney Adventure

Yesterday was D-Day.

It was the day my three older children were going to embark on the adventure of a lifetime.  The best part was, they had no idea where they were going. 

If you read Friday’s post, you know all about it, and you probably know that keeping something like that a secret was quite the trick, especially since I announced it to thousands of my closest friends on the internet first, including everyone we hung out with at church on Sunday.

But it worked!

The kids woke up giddy and clueless.  Throughout the morning, as they languished over their schoolwork, they threw ideas back and forth like popcorn.

Maybe we were going hiking!  Or camping!  But wait–I hadn’t asked anyone to pack, so we couldn’t be going far.

No one had noticed the three neat piles of clothes on the table in my room, and no one had thought twice when Nana brought two extra suitcases over “because she was cleaning out,” and no one saw me lug three suitcases into the back of the van while Jeff suddenly decided to show the kids the pictures Jonathan took with his camera.  Nope.  No one had seen any of that.

So of course, we couldn’t be going anywhere overnight!  Too bad, because that would have been fun.

Meanwhile, the suggestions continued.  Maybe Grandma and Grandpa are coming to visit?  Maybe we were going to Beachwood, a little vacation place we sometimes visit in the summers, or perhaps up to Whistler, British Columbia, where Nana and Papa have a timeshare.  Or maybe it was family day at Ft. Lewis and we were all going to drive down there?

“It’s going to be better than anything you’ve ever done,” Jeff said casually as he walked through the dining room.  “It’s going to blow your head off.” 

Five sets of eyeballs grew round like moons and five jaws dropped like meteors.

What. could. it. be?

Thankfully, the Fairy Godmother had finally finished all of her secret preparations and had even managed to get a shower so the magic was flowing.  Besides, two parents (who shall remain nameless) had finally had just about all they could take of pure excitement and raw childhood glee, so for the love of Peter Pan, it was time to go! 

The clues were in place.  The question was, how long would it take them to figure out where they were going?

The first clue was right outside the front door.

Balloon Banner

The Mother of the Year award goes to the woman who blew up dozens of balloons, created a balloon banner, hid it from five children, and managed to put it up without any of them seeing. Woo hoo!

The night before, I created a balloon banner in Mickey Mouse colors.  I dizzied myself blowing up a bunch of balloons, then Jeff blew up a few more.  I secured them to a line of dental floss to create a banner.  We have yards and yards of dental floss from various Army trainings Jeff has done in which he always seems to acquire a little pack of dental floss.  The Army is fastidious about dental hygiene, you know.

Meanwhile, back in the Glover house, I floss about as often as I sleep in.

Ahem.

DIY balloon banner

Good thing there are other uses for dental floss.

Dental floss is perfect for creating a balloon banner because it is strong, lightweight, and practically invisible in between all of those balloons.  To create a banner, just tie the floss around the ends of the balloons, trying not to crowd them too much (a mistake I made).  If you crowd them, the banner will end up very bunchy.  It worked out just fine in this application, but it was very fat and that would have made it more difficult to string up against a wall.

I tied one end of the balloon banner to the railing with black streamers so the kids could “open” the balloon banner when it was time for the adventure!

Make a balloon banner

Under the balloon banner, I placed the first clue, an envelop inscribed with the words Once Upon a Time…

Disney on a Dime

How all good stories begin

I thought Pooh should hold it.

Surprise trip to Disney

A very useful sort of bear

When it was time, we released the children onto the deck (mad chaos!) and let them read the clue.

Disney Surprise

Discovering the first clue(s)

The letter inside the envelope contained a poem in squiggly font.  It read like this:

Shake a hook,

Kiss a queen,

Go somewhere you’ve never been.

Make a wish,

Dare to dream,

Fly to places yet unseen.

Ride a carpet,

Chase a star,

Doesn’t matter who you are!

Count to three,

Jump right in!

Let the adventure begin…

I made that up myself.

Disney Adventure

They stopped and looked at each other.  Then Faith read it again.  What could it mean?

“That’s all Disney stuff!” Jonathan said.

“Are we going to Disney?” Faith asked, wide-eyed.

“No, we couldn’t be going to Disney.  We’d have to got to the airport for that,” Jonathan said.  “Maybe we’re going on a cruise.”

And here I thought they wouldn’t dream big enough.

Disney Adventure

Your carriage awaits!

The three older kids jumped in the van while Jeff took the twins on an adventure of their own.  We were headed for our first stop, which I knew was Nana’s house, but they didn’t.  All they knew was they were going to get another clue when they got there.

On the way, they chatted about their clues and came to the following conclusion:

All the clues in the poem pointed to Disney.  We were going to see a Disney parade!  No, wait, Jonathan hates parades.  We were going to see a Disney movie at the movie theater!  The kids had never been to a movie in a movie theater, even though their friend, Caleb, had been to dozens and they weren’t at all jealous.  Peter Pan was a particularly strong theme, so it seemed logical that we were going to see Peter Pan in the theater!  It totally fit the clues!

Also, the balloon banner was made of red, white, and black.  The black was for the pirate in Peter Pan, duh, and clearly, the white and red were meant to represent the colors of the Japanese flag.  The kids’ dear friends, Kiri and Moira, are half-Japanese, so obviously we were going to pick them up on the way and take them along too!  What fun!

But the car did not go to Kiri and Moira’s house.  It went to Nana’s house, where Clue #2 was waiting.

Pixie Dust

Don’t forget your pixie dust

Come back tomorrow to find out what happened when the kids opened Clue #2, and discover some more fun Disney crafts to do with your own family! 

Parenting 21 Comments

I believe you can find grace for the mother you are and help to become the mother you long to be—a mom who has the freedom to choose the better things and enjoy her kids right now.

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