What to do, What to DO???

Fear not fellow DIYers!! Batty is here to save the day.

Q&A

Q. Bleach.. what do i use? how do i get different colors?

Problem:Last time i bleached my jeans they ended up looking vomit stained

A:vomit stained?? lol been there, trust me X) the best thing to do is first make sure you know what kind of fabric you're bleaching, natural fibers, like cotton, silk, wool, pubes (uhhh scratch that... lol) will bleach the best. hybrids (because i can't remember what they're actually called) like 50% polyester and such.. wont bleach very well, if at all...

i got the orange spots on that one skirt by chance, i don't really like them, i wanted them to be purple like on my pants... those turned out better than i thought they would they had orange tint to them too, the reason they're purple now is because after i bleached them i put them in a dye bath, RIT dye, you can find it at craft stores, drug stores, even the grocery store, so like, if you have an old pair of Khaki (eeeek!!) pants that fit awesomely but are.. well khaki, you can dye them dark green, black.. red whatever the hell you want really, but my point was that once you do the bleach spots you can dye  the thing however you want.. hell i just thought of a cool idea! dye the spots two different colors like half green half uhh something else heh..

but the basics are this, wear gloves, have a big old space to splatter however you want, and make sure you dilute the bleach.. even just a little bit i usually do like 3 parts bleach one part water, but sometimes i'll use less than that even.

if you want to you can paint a design with a paint brush, i did that on the pants too... you just have to be careful because it's liquid and it will spread out when it touches the fabric, so unless you want a big blob try to go easy on the bleach..

most importantly, you'll want to be patient when you're bleaching, wait for the first parts to bleach before you bleach anything else.. and if you have to touch it up, you can use the paint brush to go over it again.. don't do that too much though unless a few holes dont bother you because it will wear the fabric down...

Q: My shirt... it sucks... what can i do?

Problem: My shirt is a little big, and really boring, but i don't want to just cut off the sleeve like i usually do...

A:Try using bleach splatters and/or safty pins.. you could cut the tops of the sleeves and connect them again with pins.. you could cut off the neck hem... you could cut part of the fabric beneath the front of the neck and pin it back closed... you can cut it off the shirt and hand stitch it to a new one.. there are soooooooooo many things you can do. even if you already have sleeveless shirts you can easily make this one different with paint or stitches or pins.. i even use the metal off of the tops of lighters to accent some of my stuff, and pop tabs are thee shit too lol.. go crazy on it!!

Perhaps you've seen this on another page...
 

Q: Paint not DRYING?!?!

Problem: I've got this black t-shirt that I've been painting with acrylic. I outlined it two days ago, and today it's still not completely dry! Is there something like a medium base that I should put on top of it so that it'll hold, or do I just need to wait longer? How long does acrylic usually take to dry on fabric? Or is there something I should've mixed with the paint before applying it?

A: acrylic sucks bad when it comes to painting on fabric!! two days to dry though? that shouldn't happen at all, unless you used a TON of paint on it or it's oil based, the main thing you're going to have to worry about with the acrylic is that it might start chipping after a while once it's dry, the only real way to prevent that is to use fabric paint to begin with, but in my experiance if you are making a large image, fabric paint will bunch the fabric up when it dries..

if it isn't dry by now, try taking a hair dryer to it for a while, otherwise let it out in the sun or just let it sit on top of your fridge or tv, something that gets warm, and that should speed it up.

make sure the paint you're using isn't really old too, 'cause then it'll just be bad paint.