T Shirt Week-Day 1: $1 Foofa Shirt

Dollar Store Foofa shirt.

V's love for all things Yo Gabba Gabba related is stronger than ever. Several years ago, it was fairly easy to find Yo Gabba Gabba shirts, pjs, and socks, at places like Target and Walmart. Now the only place to buy them is online or occasionally at little shops in the mall. And they're pretty expensive.

Now if you've been reading for any length of time, you know I'm kind of cheap. I like to think I'm also practical. Instead of buying expensive clothes for the kids, and then harping on them all day to not get dirt/paint/chocolate/any other joyful substance on their clothes, for the most part,  I just buy 'em cheap clothes, and let 'em have fun.

I recently noticed that Dollar Tree was carrying 100% cotton t shirts. I originally had planned to buy some to cut up for other projects, but on closer inspection, most of them didn't have any visible flaws, and they were actually nicer than the shirts from the craft store, which are usually a 50/50 poly cotton blend.

I picked up a pink shirt in V's size, and came home and got to work.

Here was my technique, if you want to call it that: I printed out the Foofa mask pattern from the Nickjr site, scanned it into my computer, imported into Print Shop, and enlarged it quite a bit. After printing that out, I cut out the facial features, traced them onto the shirt with a washable Crayola marker, and then painted the features using regular old t shirt paint, and a brush. Finally, I ended up doing the black part of her eyes with a Sharpie.

It sounds like a fairly long process, but it really wasn't. If I were blessed with any sort of drawing abilities, I could have cut out several steps, but using this process, even I, a stick figure drawing person, was able to turn out a pretty good result.

It goes without saying that one shouldn't sell projects like this, since they're A) based on a trademarked character, and b) based on a fun freebie from Nickjr, but if your kiddo is a Yo Gabba Gabba fan, this is a pretty cool way to make a shirt for a buck.

If your little one isn't a fan of Yo Gabba Gabba, (do such children exist?) you could use the same process to make them whatever kind of character shirt they'd love.

Stay tuned for more t shirts for the kids all week long.