Bleach Dyed and Painted Tee Shirts

I was surfing the internet, and can across a whole slew of shirts customized using bleach. I liked the idea, but wanted to add a twist to the idea. By adding paint aswell

The first step is figuring out the design you want to achieve. After a lot of ideas floating in my head, I decided on this cool Daft Punk stylized version of the famous Pulp Fiction gun pose, as well as the group's logo on top

Almost any cotton shirt will work for this project. However I can't vouch for every one or every material. The bleach will lighten the color of the shirt so a red shirt, will become a lighter red color. Not like a pink, more of a white washed version of that red. A black shirt however, gets a copper brownish color when bleached. Which I thought would look cool for this shirt

If you have never used or been around bleach, please read up. BLEACH IS A CHEMICAL! It's not a very strong chemical, like you would imagine hydrochloric acid to be, but it can be very dangerous if misused! It irritates the skin if you contact it, it can badly burn and damage your eyes, and ingesting it can kill you! So please be safe and responsible around bleach. I used protective gloves when using it, to give you some scope of how cautious you should be.

As for what I actually did. I put the bleach into a spray bottle, brought that and a cardboard box outside, because of the nasty fumes bleach releases. And I began to spray the shirt in various areas, to get the desired effect. I have a video showing how fast the stuff acts and colors the shirt. It doesn't show up too well on the video. But after 20-40 secs. The color on the shirt appers

Once you finish bleaching the shirt. Let it sit out and dry. Anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or so. The longer you leave it in the sun, the lighter the color will get. Once it's dry. Rinse the shirt with cold-cool water. And let it dry once again. I let it hang dry, but I'm not sure what effect (if any) using the dryer would have

The daft punk logo was printed, because I didn't need it to be that big. The main image however was much larger. For this, I cut some paper from a big roll I had (I really recommend getting a roll of paper fellow DIY enthusiasts. I great investment). To get the image larger than my computer screen. I used the internet browser on my PS3 to get the image on my tv. Then I traced the image from there. A great simple why to trace designs larger than your computer monitor.

This is the longest and most tedious part of the project. Just take your time and don't rush the cuts. You don't need to be exact. I took some creative license (AKA laziness) and messed some smaller spots. The designs also had areas that needed to stay, that were inside areas that had to be cut. You could cut those out, and set them back in, but I found that to be both more difficult, and aligning the pieces was too finicky. What I did was leave bars connecting the areas (which can be seen in the letters, and the close up shot)

Time for the easy and fun part the painting. For the text, I transferred the logo, then realized it didn't show too well. So I outlined the text in white, and redid it. It came out much more legible.

I wanted to put a spin on the design to give it some extra flair. I decided to paint it with a rainbow scheme. I simply sectioned off 7 parts for each color of paint. And painted each. I overlapped slightly, and didn't let the paint dry completely, so it could blend a little. I'm not sure if I should outline the design in white like I did with the text. I would love to hear some thoughts on what you think!

And it's done! Let the paint dry and you're set. It might fade over time, depending on your paint. I plan on going over the design with some sealer once I'm 100% finished. But I'm not sure if I should add some outline to the design. Or if I want to add something to the back.

Obviously you don't need to follow this instructable completely. It's more for the process and tips, then for this particular design. If you make anything using this instructable. I would love to see what you make! Until next time. This is Drake, signing off!