I was struggling this last week to come up with an idea for this weeks Crafty Geek episode. I wanted to do something iZombie but since I had already done something clay related, I didn’t want to use that medium again. Thank you to my wonderful husband for giving me this weeks idea of a bleached Max Rager shirt!

We just witnessed the season finale of iZombie last night and I think this shirt would fit in perfectly at Vaughn Du Clark’s Super Max launch party! If you want to “Live to the Max” and wear this t-shirt while you do, here are the things you will need:

• T-shirt (I used a black shirt, but any color of your choosing)
• Bleach
• safety goggles
• gloves
• Max Rager stencil (I made my own)
• cardboard (to put inside the t-shirt)
• old toothbrush or paintbrush
• masking tape

This project definitely falls under the easy category! We did this in about 15 minutes so it’s a quick craft idea too!

To start out, you’ll want to make sure that your shirt is either 100% cotton or a cotton blend. It seems to work a little better. Next you’ll want to create the Max Rager stencil. I did this by printing out large letters in a fairly easy font and traced them onto a piece of poster board. Once I had the letters the way I wanted, I cut them out using a razor blade. Please be careful using sharp blades! If you are younger, you might want to get an adult to help with this part.

Once your stencil is ready, its time to put it on the shirt. You can position it however you like! When you have it where you want it, tape down the edges using the masking tape. Now to protect the back of the shirt from getting bleach on it, put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to act as a barrier. We only want the bleach to go where we want it to!

Now comes the fun part! Take the bleach and put it in a spray bottle. Make sure that you only designate that bottle for bleach! Put on those gloves and safety goggles! Bleach can be extremely harmful to the skin and eyes so err on the side of caution! Also, it is a good idea to do this project outside as the bleach might overspray and you don’t want to be bleaching your carpet. Wearing clothing that you don’t care about getting bleach on is also a plus (accidents do happen)!

Hold the spray bottle about 6-12 inches away from the shirt and start spraying. Concentrate mainly on the stencil. Don’t spray too much bleach because you don’t want it to bleed and mess up your letters! You should start to see the fabric change colors pretty much instantly. Depending on the color of shirt you are using will depend on the color after you bleach it. For example, I used a black t-shirt and the bleach made the design more on the orange-red side! I wanted this to have a bit of an edgy flair to it so I sprayed around the edge of the stencil lightly to give it almost a spray paint look.

I also wanted to add splatters of bleach to make it look like paint splatters. To accomplish this look, I took an old toothbrush I wasn’t using anymore and dipped it in the bleach. I then flicked it over the t-shirt in different areas. You can do as much or as little bleach as you want depending on the desired effect you’re going for! Have fun with it!

When you are finished adding the bleach to your shirt don’t let it sit for too long. If you let it set for too long the bleach may eat through the fabric and we don’t want that! Remove the stencil and carefully take the cardboard out of the shirt. You’ll want to thoroughly rinse the excess bleach out of the shirt. You can do this in the sink or a bathtub. Just make sure you rinse with cold water until the water runs clear. Once the water is clear, put it in the washing machine on a rinse cycle to make sure that all of the bleach is removed! You can dry it normally in a dryer or you can hang dry. That’s it! You’re done! See? Wasn’t that easy?

The first picture above is right before I rinsed the bleach out. It was quite red-orange. The second picture above is the final product. After the final rinse, it lightened up a bit but was still a cool orangey color! This shirt will definitely help you take it to the max!

If you have any other nerdy ideas let me know in the comments section below! You can also tweet them to me @luckynerdgirl on twitter using #TheCraftyGeek!

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