on Making Shirts 20% Cooler

So this is also in line with the Dress-Mod Project in that the motivations for these projects is the fact that I know my wardrobe is super full and I just don't wear half of it because it either doesn't fit and I'm just keeping it like the hoarder that I am (anti-Rarity, lol) or that it just isn't exciting enough.

So recently I've WANTED to buy some My Little Pony themed shirts but with a surplus of unused clothes, I wasn't about to blow my Graduate School Tuition (YES, CAPITALIZED LIKE A TITLE BECAUSE IT TAKES OVER MY LIFE) on MLP:FIM gear at something like 25 bucks a piece. SO, I figured since I'm doing the crafty thing anyway I figured I'd take the poorman's way out and make it a DIY project.

I went to Walmart (Gasp) and bought a 6 pack of Tulip Bright Permanent Fabric Markers for about $10 (Amazon there is selling them for ~$13... just go to a Walmart, even if they are evil). So I have several plain-colored shirts that I wanted to use. The first of these was a bright yellow GAP shirt that I never wear (it blends in with my skin color, sadface) so even though it's a little brighter than her coat color, I thought I'd make it into a Fluttershy shirt. So our base materials are a plain shirt, these fabric markers, and a printed out cutie-mark stencil (just found some nice quality cutie mark art online and created an outline of each part in Photoshop).

The easiest way to cut out a stencil is with your handy-dandy emo-blade exact-o-knife. Of course, as always, make sure you're using a surface that won't get damaged or that you won't mind getting damaged. For this, because I don't have any fancy crafty cutting mats, I ripped apart an old shoebox and salvaged the cardboard for various uses in this project. And of course, for safety purposes, always make sure that a responsible adult is the one who will be doing the cutting for you. ... What are you talking about, of course I cut it out myself, why would you... HEeeeey. Sadface. Also, you may notice in the picture, I also cut out some wax paper (yeah, I know, what?) along with the normal paper just as a secondary stencil, just in case something went wrong with the paper stencil (good thing I did, because it turned out that the ink from the printer would bleed from the marker into to color, which created some icky color muddling on the edge but hardly noticeable, and I also managed to cover it, regardless I switched to mostly using the wax-paper as a stencil).

Here's where the cardboard was also really handy, I put in inside the shirt right under where I wanted to draw, so that I would have a hard surface, and just in case the markers bled, I didn't want ink going onto the back of the shirt. The latter wasn't so much of a problem, but with the fabric as soft and stretchy as it was, having the cardboard as a backing really helped.

The easiest way to use the stencil was just to trace the outline and then fill in from there. Which means, unfortunately, I had some problems with the butterfly antennae and messed those up in trying to free-hand them because I wasn't looking at the original *le dumb*. As for the markers in general, I really expected that they wouldn't color over the yellow fabric or that the colors would be muddled because of the cloth color, but after testing it on one of the hidden areas inside the shirt, I was surprised at how bright and clear the colors stayed even on a colored shirt, so there was no reason to bleach parts of the shirt, I just started drawing straight on the shirt. I like the brush tip, it makes it easy to add a fine line where you want it, but not hard to fill in solid areas.

So here are the three I was able to finish - Fluttershy, a Rainbow Dash Hood-tee, and a Rarity shirt.

But let's compare to the official merchandise:
Rarity - Okay, so I messed up on the detail-lines for the diamonds - if you look up close, you can tell, but from far away, it's barely noticeable. Any passing Brony or Pegasis will know what it's supposed to be. Also, the cloth in the shirt I used is a little higher quality and fancier. I was surprised that the marker actually worked on it, but it's definitely more Rarity than the other two.

Rainbow Dash - the cutie mark is a bit off center and a little too low. Also, Red wasn't included in the colors that I bought, so I had to fudge it a little, and there's also no white, so the cloud is just... transparent. And the rainbow-bolt isn't as exact and precise as I would've like, but oh well... It has a HOOD.

Fluttershy - Like I already mentioned, I messed up in trying to free-hand draw the antennae, and while the color is too BRIGHT, I think it looks much better than the pale-mud color that is being offered online.

Also, my Pegasus shirts both have a one-up on the official: I added wings to the back! AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwww, yeah.

Though as I mentioned, I do not have Red, so no Applejack shirts coming yet, I also do not have an appropriately Pinkie shirt to mod for that, and no White means no Twilight Sparkle, as of yet. But for now, I have shirts for half of the Mane 6 - I'm really needing to find myself something to Pinkie-ify. If not, I'll have to find out how to make a rainbow umbrella hat! But in general, the colors in the Bright pack are pretty great for Ponies, what with the Pink, Yellow, Purple, and Blue. I haven't really used the Orange or Green yet.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with these markers - I've made 3 shirts that would have otherwise cost me over $75, for just a little over $10, and I've saved some wardrobe space. My clothes are now 20% cooler.