With a make-your-own souvenir t-shirt you can save money (whatever the cost of souvenir t-shirts are x seven family members). And, dipping everyone’s hands into red paint sure builds memories. My kind of stuff! With these cute crabs, we preserved children’s handprints too. So, last week at the beach, we made beach crab t-shirts as our souvenirs.
We simply bought big packs of plain, white t-shirts and a jar of red paint (you’ll need an acrylic based paint that won’t wash away). And we followed the tutorial at Nothing But Country.
Make sure to line the inside of your t-shirt with newspaper so that the paint doesn’t seep through. We poured the paint onto a paper plate then dipped one hand. We then turned the t-shirt – using the same hand to make both sides of the crab.
We let all those t-shirts dry well overnight. Then, we used permanent, black markers to add the cute little crabby eyes and grin.
See, he sort of resembles those ghost crabs we saw a lot of?
Plus, you can add the name of your vacation destination.
Makes for really cute pictures too!
I’ve also seen many variations of handprint t-shirts. Some make patriotic eagles and more. Be sure to visit Nothing But Country for the step-by-step tutorial of this Easy Kids Summer Time Beach Shirt. (We made them for the adults too!)
Now, you know that I would LOVE this. We have always stuck to tie-dyed shirts, but this looks like so much fun!! I didn’t know you could use just house paint instead of fabric paint.
So far so good on the house paint! It’s what we could find at the beach (my lack of planning and not taking acrylic paint). I’ve washed them all and they all still look great. Love them!
Ha! This beats the red Old Navy flag shirt of 2006 that I made our family wear on many occasions.
Just wanted to let you know that we followed Nana’s marsh pastel tutorial yesterday from Barb’s August newsletter and we had a great time. http://tinyurl.com/3lvn79d Thanks for sharing it with all of us!
Heather W
Heather – thank you so much for letting me know you enjoyed Nana’s marsh pastel. I always love to hear when a family follows along and loves pastels like we do. Thanks so much for the link. Y’all did a beautiful job!