May 28, 2016 10:04 am
If you think camp is just for girls, try being in a group of leaders who have been paired through heat waves, wolf spiders and torrential downpours for years.
This year, our group of four decided to go with Star Wars themed camp names. (Then of course, we turned to Amazon for silly T-shirts and giggles through the remainder of the camp planning meeting.)
Personally, I fell in love with this Rey-inspired T-shirt. 
And after a bit of brainstorming, we found a way to do it pretty cost-effectively.
It helps that I still had a small stash of donated T-shirts, but a little creativity helped us overcome the need for stencils and for fabric paint.
With stencils, you could do one of two things:
Buy multiple packages of 2-inch letter stencils and cut and adhere the words together (for sanity purposes).For “Girls Rule the Galaxy,” you’d technically need three sets of letters, unless you are confident in your ability to adapt a “T” into an “L.”
I liked these “Papyrus” letter stencils I initially found at Joann’s but they are also available at Amazon.
Making Your Own Fabric PaintMy other challenge was getting enough fabric paint. Guessing how much paint is needed is tricky enough but fabric paint can add up in costs quickly.
Instead, we decided to use resources wisely and use up some of our leftover acrylic paint.
There are two downsides to using acrylic paint on fabric.
First, as you can tell in the picture above, the paint is very thick and doesn’t seem as smooth as it could be. (Though for a sample demonstration for the girls, it works just fine!)
The other downside to using acrylic paint on fabric is that acrylic paint does stiffen the fabric. But instead of setting this idea aside, I invested in a bottle of textile medium. This is a paint additive that you can add to acrylic paint to make it easier to paint on fabric and to make the fabric more flexible once the paint is dried.
You will need to use 2 parts textile medium to 1 part acrylic paint to achieve the desired effect.
We’re excited to try this project out with our Cadettes at camp this summer!
Posted by Robbie
Categories: art, brownies, Cadettes, camp, Girl Scouts, Juniors
Tags: crafts
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This sounds like a really fun project we could do for any kind of kid activity! I’m thinking birthday party craft! Thanks for sharing!
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By Jennifer on May 30, 2016 at 12:51 pm
Awesome! I hope you have fun with it! Thanks for stopping by!
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By robertalschneider on May 30, 2016 at 12:58 pm
I’ve always made a lot of DIY shirts -super fun!
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By kalinann on May 30, 2016 at 7:25 pm
Nice have fun with your project! I know a few youth girls who would love this too!
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By Mihaela Echols on May 30, 2016 at 10:40 pm
What a great craft for girls! The girls are blessed to have women who care so much about even the little things. Making memories together.
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By pjkuhn on May 31, 2016 at 10:20 am
Cute!! And a fun Star Wars tie-in tooo!
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By Sarah Eliza @ devastateboredom on May 31, 2016 at 10:44 pm
How fun! What a cute shirt 🙂
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By Caroline @ In Due Time on June 1, 2016 at 10:49 am
Fun project and I adore the sentiment 🙂 Thanks for sharing with us at Creatively Crafty #ccbg 🙂
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By LydiaF1963 on June 6, 2016 at 3:07 pm
I’ll add my 2 cents and say the girls had a blast making the shirts at camp. Thanks for making the stencils and bringing the rest of the supplies.
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By Jess on July 26, 2016 at 2:25 pm
[…] used acrylics on a number of projects, including DIY T-shirts, and find that typical acrylic paints are heavy and stiff when on fabric. […]
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By Canvas Painting Using High-Flow Acrylic Paint – Use Resources Wisely on July 28, 2016 at 7:13 am