>> In this video, we're showing you
how to make your own custom clothing designs.
Surprisingly, all it takes is a little bit
of bleach and some freezer paper.
[Captions by Jeffrey D. at Y Translator]
Here's what you're going to need to get started.
You'll need a shirt or other article of clothing
that is mostly made of cotton or linen.
Other types of cloth may not react very well to the bleach.
A household iron, some freezer paper,
a spray bottle, a razor blade,
and of course, the bleach itself.
I have here printed-out one of the King of Random logos,
and this is the design that we're going to put onto one of these shirts.
To transfer this design from a piece of paper onto the cotton shirt,
we're going to be using our freezer paper.
Freezer paper is just paper that's designed to wrap stuff up
before you put it into the freezer.
It's pretty much plain paper on one side,
the other side has a shiny waxy surface.
When I first started researching this project,
I thought it was probably going to be better
to just use something like contact paper.
Contact paper is a sticky clear sheet with a backing that comes in rolls.
I thought it would be really good for transferring
a stencil design onto a shirt.
But it turns out, there are some real advantages
to using the freezer paper instead.
Because one side of the freezer paper is like normal paper,
you can write on it with pens, pencils or markers very easily.
Contact paper being plastic,
that doesn't work so well.
We're going to stick our freezer paper onto our shirts
by using heat from an iron.
And again, that's one of the advantages of the freezer paper,
is it doesn't stick until you hit it with the iron.
So you have all the time in the world to perfectly position it
just where you want it.
Combine that with the fact that the roll of freezer paper
is usually really big so you get great coverage.
Which prevents over-spray onto your shirt.
Let's tear off a good size sheet of our freezer paper
and get ready to transfer our image.
You want to take the design and place it face down
onto the waxy side of the freezer paper.
Despite the wax coating,
a little bit of masking tape
should do a great job of holding your design in place.
Now you can see that with a black printed design,
you can see right through the freezer paper
on to what you're going to want to cut.
To help increase the life of both your razor blades
and whatever you're working on,
it is best if you have a cutting mat that you can use.
Now, how this is going to work is you'll cut out everything
that you want to bleach onto your shirt.
It's kind of going to be the reverse image of what we've got here.
I'll be using a black T-shirt and the bleach will turn it lighter.
If you cut the design entirely out of the freezer paper,
it may be difficult to keep all of the pieces aligned
just where you want them.
Small pieces will be harder to keep flat when you lay them on the shirt.
For example, if I were cutting out this T and K piece
which is all joined together,
I would cut most of the way around it.
But in the corners, I would leave a small piece
where I don't cut.
That will leave the design connected to the rest of the paper
until I'm ready to remove it.
You may want to trace over your design
using a pen or pencil on the freezer paper,
or maybe you prefer to just use your knife,
and cut directly onto the pattern.
Either way works just fine.
Using a sharp knife with a good point,
carefully cut out all the pieces from your design
leaving a few connecting points
so that they don't completely come off of the freezer paper.
With our design prepped, we now need to move on
to prepping the T-shirt to be ready to be bleached.
Before you bleach a new article of clothing,
you want to be sure you wash and dry it
to remove any coatings that may be on it.
We now want to cut out a piece of cardboard
that can fit inside this shirt.
That will both help it keep its shape,
and prevent any bleach
from getting through the front onto the backside
while it's being bleached.
Since my cardboard does have gaps in a couple of spots,
I'm just going to cover those with some duct tape.
[Music]
Once you have your piece of cardboard
cut to the right size and shape,
fit your T-shirt over it.
It's not necessary to have a piece of cardboard that fills
the entire shirt the way I have it on this one.
It really only needs to be large enough to fit your whole design on it.
But this way, I'll be able to use the same piece of cardboard
for any other design I do in the future.
With the cardboard inside the shirt,
you want to take your iron and press the whole thing down,
so it is nice and smooth.
This will help the freezer paper stick to it better
and your design will turn out nicer.
With the T-shirt nice and flat,
it's time to position the design on the shirt
where you're going to want it.
First, let's remove our pattern from the back of our freezer paper.
Now we can position it right where we want it,
and this part right here is why freezer paper is much better
than contact paper.
'Cause for contact paper,
it would stick as soon as it touched the shirt,
and you wouldn't be able to reposition it at all.
The freezer paper covers a pretty good amount of the T-shirt,
but it is possible to get some over-spray.
The bleach solution could travel through the air a little bit,
and land on parts of the shirt that you don't want bleached.
So it's a good idea to make sure that every part of the surface is covered.
You can use some old newspapers,
some additional cardboard
or more freezer paper to do this.
[Music]
With the whole t-shirt covered,
it's time to remove the pieces
that we've cut out from our design,
and expose the t-shirt underneath.
Carefully go through your design
and lift up the cut-out pieces by the edges.
If you've made your connecting point small enough,
they should tear through easily.
But if not, you can very carefully take your razor blade and finish the cuts.
Be sure you don't cut down through the T-shirt itself.
[Music]
Just to be sure that none of the edges have peeled up
so the bleach will get under them,
let's hit it with the iron again.
You may have noticed that I haven't removed
the second half of the design yet.
And that's because we're going to try
and make this in two different stages,
so we have two levels of brightness on our t-shirt.
We'll use 1/2 bleach and 1/2 water in one of these little Spritz bottles.
We'll also want to be sure that we have several paper towels easily at hand.
[Music]
Be sure you don't have any excess bleach on the outside of the bottle.
[Music]
With the mix of bleach and water in the spray bottle,
you're now ready to spray it over the design.
I really like these Spritz bottles
because the evenly distribute your solution
without laying it on too heavily.
If you get too much of it on,
it can soak through the shirt,
and down under the edges of the design.
So you really only want a light misting on the surface.
We want to dilute the bleach because chlorine bleach by itself
is actually powerful enough
that it can dissolve the fibers of the shirt.
If you apply it directly, it can eat right through the cotton.
We'll spray on our bleach solution
covering all of the exposed parts of the design.
And then immediately,
we'll dab off all of the extra liquid with some paper towels.
We do that to make sure it doesn't soak down into the cotton,
and under the design,
and to try and keep our freezer paper
from getting too wet.
If it gets soaked, will have a very hard time
pulling it off of the shirt later.
In a matter of seconds, we can see the effect
of the bleach on the black shirt.
It's obvious that some areas have received a little bit more bleach than others.
So we'll do a second layer and try and hit those darker spots more.
Our first layer has changed pretty well.
Generally you can keep adding more and more bleach
and give it a little bit more time to react
and it will get lighter and lighter.
You have to decide what color you want.
When bleaching a black shirt, it will usually start out sort of orange,
and then as you get more and more bleach on to it,
it will turn peach and then almost white.
After a few separate treatments of the bleach,
the first half of our design is where I want it.
Now, we'll peel off the right side and cover all of it with more bleach.
That should leave us with the left side being very light
and the right side being sort of a dark orange.
If you want a very light, almost white color,
it can really help to iron over the bleach as it's drying.
Be aware though, this puts chlorine gas into the air.
So you should never do it indoors,
where you'll end up breathing the fumes.
Once your design is to the color and shade that you want,
it's time to remove all of the masking and stencil,
and stop their reaction using some cold water.
The pattern doesn't look quite as good when it's wet.
But after a quick trip to the dryer, it should look good as new.
If you don't feel like using a stencil,
you can use other methods to apply the solution onto the shirt.
You can spray it directly from the bottle.
Maybe flick some drops on with your hand,
or even use a paintbrush.
If you want to add the bleach to a lot of the parts of the shirt
but just mask off a few portions,
you can use tape,
and either cut out your design from that,
or just lay the tape down in the design that you want.
Something else that's fun to do with these shirts
is after you've stripped the color out with some bleach,
you can add a little bit more back in if you want to.
I have here some alcohol based ink.
This is basically blue permanent marker ink,
and some rubbing alcohol.
I'm going to add the rubbing alcohol into the Spritz bottle
and then several drops of our blue ink.
At that point, we should be able to add that on
using the spritzer to our shirt once it's been dried.
To test how much color we get, let's try spritzing
onto our freezer paper.
We can see that the blue is very subtle.
It doesn't change the color drastically or quickly.
That's better if you're spraying onto these shirts
because if it's too concentrated,
and you don't have your sprayer positioned exactly where you want it,
the color is going to go in the wrong spot.
Having a very dilute color as much more forgiving as you can go in
and add little bits of color at a time until you reach
the shade you want.
YouTuber NightHawkInLight had a video on bleach shirts as well.
And in his, he had a shirt with a rocket on it.
I thought that sounded like such a cool idea
that I wanted to try on my own.
[Music]
As a reminder, don't store your bleach solution in a plastic bottle long-term.
The bleach could do damage to the bottle causing it to leak.
This method of shirt designing is fast.
It's fun.
And combining a bunch of these techniques,
you can come up with some really cool stuff.
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Talk to you then.