Everything About Ladybugs!

Make a Ladybug Shirt at home!

The idea to make this ladybug shirt popped into my head one day while I was out shopping. And the best thing about it was that it was dirt cheap!

I was in my local dollar store looking at some craft supplies for my daughters' preschool projects and notices that they were selling clothes for small children. My youngest daughter is almost 15 months and seemed about perfect sized for some of the shirts they had. Right away I spotted this red and black shirt that I thought would be great as a ladybug shirt if only it had spots on it. Well it only took a moment or two for me to figure out that I could take it home and make it into a ladybug shirt for my little one.



I was so excited about doing this project as I walked up to pay that I completely forgot that this great little shirt was only going to cost me $1. It was quite a pleasant surprise when my total came up so low, especially in this day and time :)

Making the Ladybug T-shirt

Step 1: Get a Red Shirt

Probably the most difficult step in the process of creating this ladybug t-shirt is finding a good shirt to work with. I found one at my dollar store for my child. I recommend using a t-shirt type fabric like cotton or a cotton polyester mix. Knitted or textured fabrics will be difficult to work with as well as wash.

Basically, find something that works for you, your situation and the person who is going to wear it. If you are looking to save money, check your local thrift store or dollar store.


Step 2: Laundry Pen & A Hard Surface Please!

Okay what you want to do here is have a laundry pen such as a Sharpie rub a dub laundry pen so you can write directly on the soon-to-be ladybug t-shirt. A laundry pen won't wash off when you wash the t-shirt, well not for many washes anyway. They work great for writing on all kinds of clothing such as t-shirts and sweatshirts and as I said before I recommend using a t-shirt in this case. I used a child's shirt that I bought for my youngest daughter.

The other thing you need to do to prepare for this is get some sort of hard surface to put inside the shirt.

Now in this case, what worked for me was a binder. It fit perfectly inside the shirt for my daughter. Keep in mind this is a shirt for a 18 month to two-year-old size and my daughter is a bit big for her age so this worked perfectl. As you can see in the picture I put the binder inside and folded the sleeves down giving me a flat drawing surface.

Step 3: Design your Ladybug Pattern

I started by drawing a line down the middle of the back of the shirt and drawing a few little curves at the top of the bottom to simulate the a separation of the shell of a ladybug and then after that point I start drawing the outline of the spots for the pattern of my ladybug shirt.

I did a three a spot pattern for each side and then I just went to the process of coloring each little spot in. The whole process took me probably about 15-20 minutes to complete.

Step 4: Give a little character to the front (Optional)

In this next image you'll see that I went ahead and did a little ladybug on the front so it didn't look plain and it just kind of complemented my overall design of this being a ladybug T-shirt. You might want to illustrate a little character or design to compliment the pattern you have created on the back as well.






Step 5: Model your shirt and enjoy!

For the final step let's go ahead and try this on whoever's going to be modeling this t-shirt or wearing it. At our house it was of course my daughter.

It was hillarious when I finished this shirt because my little girl was right there with me and she already knew it was for her to wear and equally in tune to the process of me taking pictures of it.

I changed her into the shirt and my little cutie was very happy to pose for pictures. I am very pleased with the result and had a great time with the process.

This is a really easy project and I'm really thrilled at the fact that it cost me a dollar plus a little ink out of my laundry pen. Even if you calculate the cost of the shirt plus the laundry pen it was still only a couple dollars to create and a whole lot of fun!



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