Happy Birthday, Claire! (Craft Fail)

I usually do a pretty good job of crafty flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants. Every once in a while, though, I have no pants to fly with. The wheels fall off. It's usually not pretty. Lots of screaming, throwing objects and general disgust.

Friday night was one of those times.
Andrew and I had decided to make Claire a birthday gift using freezer paper stenciling. She loves to watch Chuck and expressed interest in the official shirt. (Warning: ripoff alert!) I have a super-awesome screen printing kit, but embarrassingly haven't had the chance to play with it enough to try screen printing on fabric. I soooo want to do it, but really want to make sure I have time to play with it and do it right. Anyway...

We went to get supplies and found some paint that boasted of its opaqueness, claiming to be "Like silkscreen in a can!", "So easy to use!" Spray on fabric paint. Seems genius. I wanted to work on a black shirt and the paint seemed like a good idea.

Long story (and night) short, the canned fabric paint is not really compatible with freezer paper stencils. When it (good gracious, finally) dries, the freezer paper pulls off but leaves the paint on top, making clean edges completely non-existent. I spent two hours imitating a surgeon with an X-acto knife and a black sharpie trying to make the edges look somewhat presentable. From a distance, it's pretty passable. The closer you get, the worse it looks. Not at all the smooth, crisp edges I was going for. I didn't want this thing to be obviously made in my kitchen. Sigh. (The pictures actually don't show the letters with edges nearly as ragged as I remember them being. Nice work, camera.)

I made an official "Craft Fail" tag for it, so at least we all got a few good laughs. Sorry, Claire. Happy Birthday! We owe you a better gift. :)