Makin' stuff

It's been a makin' stuff kind of day.  FIRST we headed outside to make bleach t-shirts.  This has been my favorite project of the summer.  I've made five for myself (so far), made them with the kids at summer camp, and have been eagerly awaiting the chance to do it with these friends.

We found cheap t-shirts at thrift stores or clearance racks, chose something to use as a stencil, and lightly misted the shirts with straight bleach from a spray bottle.  Let it sit for a minute or two, lift the stencil and TAH DAH! We used a combination of natural elements and plastic stencils from my stash.

The bleach changes the color of the shirt in unexpected ways.  It turns the blue shirts a pinkish color.

After we finished the t-shirts we attempted to make hot-rocks, even though the oven is still broken.  We boiled some of the rocks and put the others in the toaster oven.  The boiling didn't get them quite hot enough, and the toaster oven took forever and only fit a few at a time.  Ideally, the rocks get hot enough to easily melt the crayons into cool swirly patterns.  We had a pretty good time anyway, even though the "boiled" rocks didn't melt the crayons as smoothly as we wanted.  The kids were inspired to add glitter to the top of their hot wax.

 By the time the rocks were done in the toaster over the kids had wandered off, leaving me to make a bunch on my own. No surprise that I used my favorite pallet of the summer...

THIS was so much fun, I decided to break out the acrylic paints for some rock painting.  Everyone except Max had headed off for the beach at this point, so we painted rocks together until he got bored.

And since the paints were out.... and no one was around, and it was a beautiful day....

I had a big old paint party!  

My, how I've missed my paints this week.  I'm really happy with what I painted, but you will have to wait until tomorrow's post to see it, because tomorrow's PAINT PARTY FRIDAY  and heaven knows it's tacky to arrive at a party too early.