How to Decorate a Black T-Shirt

If you bought a black T-shirt to decorate, you may be wondering what types of garnishments will show up the best. You could use glow-in-the-dark fabric paints, silver or white acrylic paints and add textile medium, or even sparkly white iron-on letters. Once you decide what design you want on it, you are set and ready to start decorating!

Things You'll Need

• Black T-shirt
• Cardboard piece to fit inside T-shirt
• Fabric paints or acrylic paints with textile medium added
• Decal letters or pictures
• Iron
• Picture to copy design (optional)

Instructions

Making Black T-Shirt Masterpieces

1. Wash the black T-shirt if it is brand-new. Do not use fabric softener, but you can dry it in the dryer. If the T-shirt is used, then you do not need to wash it first.

2. Place the piece of cardboard in between the front and the back of the shirt. This keeps fabric paint from seeping through and creating unwanted marks on the back of the shirt. Read the directions on your paint containers carefully before decorating your black T-shirt. You will also want to pay attention to washing instructions to make sure your hard work does not come off in the washing machine.

3. Choose what type of design you are planning to use for the t-shirt. If you are not an artist, you can use pictures from wall decorations, clip art on the computer, or even coloring books. Some people will also use stencils if they are not good at drawing.

4. Use light, fluorescent, or glow-in-the-dark colors on black T-shirts to make sure that the paint shows up better. Create your design with the paints, and check that the cardboard is catching any excess paint, and it's not bleeding through.

5. Use iron-on decals to finish your shirt decorations if you want to add anything else. Iron-on letters are often useful because they are easy to put in a straight line. Again, you will want to use decals that are white, silver, or sparkly, so they stand out against the black material.

Tips & Warnings

• You can use acrylic paints instead of fabric paints. You have to add textile medium to the acrylic paint before you use it on the T-shirt. Textile medium keeps the paint from cracking and breaking on the material.

References

• Kaboose: Painted T-shirts
• Spot 98: Decals and Letters
• Wall to Wall Stencils: Fabric Stencil Paint and Textile Medium