Welcome!

Cole’s little rainbow birthday party photo shoot will be up shortly and since I could not find a rainbow shirt I loved for him- I decided to make my own! I mulled over several ways to make the rainbow on the t-shirt.  Should I design the rainbow in photoshop and trace the rainbow image onto the shirt? Should I make a stamp?  Should I create a rainbow decal and iron it on?  So many options… I decided to simply freehand the rainbow instead- One of the things I enjoy about the boho rainbow trend is it is not a perfect rainbow- has a bit of edge to it, so I thought free handing it would be best, although I was very nervous about screwing it up lol.

Update: We still have the shirt nearly 3 months later! The shirt has held up over many washes! The white part, notsomuch with a toddler wearing it!

Materials:

Acrylic Paint– (I used acrylic, you can purchase fabric paint though) I could not find the colors I wanted in fabric paint & I love Target’s Hand made Modern colors

Fabric Medium (if using acrylic paint, this makes it softer versus getting a hardened paint on your t-shirt) Also, I did not use this personally cuz I ran out of time

Paint Brush

Piece of Cardboard

T-shirt

Place a piece of cardboard into shirt so the paint does not leak to other side.

Mix fabric medium and acrylic paint.  Add just a little paint to your paintbrush and create your rainbow arch.  I wanted more control of how much paint i used, I found it better to create a light arch and then gradually add the paint to fill in the arch.

I also practiced my arch several times on paper to get just the right paintbrush swing =)

Another tip- test the paint color on a white tee the colors were not exactly what I wanted after placing on tee and I wish I tested it first.  I ended up mixing more color and changing the color after.

I have more pictures of him in his shirt, but I will save it for the rainbow birthday party post. This photo was the best I could do with a toddler who kept running and rolling around.

Also, if you do not want to make your own boho rainbow shirt- here are a couple cute ones I found on etsy-