Last year, the siblings worked together to make painted t-shirts… but they’ve since outgrown them! I picked up a few blank shirts from the craft store and this time they were Veronika’s works of art, as a surprise for big brother Travis.

Before she could paint the shirts, I marked out their first initials with masking tape (you could also use contact paper) so a V and T would be left behind.

The only fabric paint I had on hand was puffy paint, but this worked fine if I squirted it onto paper plates. We had a few novel painting methods to test out! First up was shape sponges. She loved pressing these into the paint and then pressing down onto the shirts to see the stars and circles left behind.

Next, we made car tracks over the shirts! Run a toy car’s wheels through the paint and then drive across the shirts.

This was a big hit, accompanied by lots of vrooming engine noises of course. And sometimes she wanted to paint the cars with the sponges, too!

She wasn’t as interested in the third option, which was rolling a ping pong ball through the paint and then along the shirts.

Mostly the design was her own creation; I only helped out enough to make sure the fabric was covered all around the V and T in tape, so that the images would be left behind once the tape was removed.

Set the shirts aside to dry… and then stage a fashion show!

Veronika was so proud she wanted to keep hers on all night.