[intro music]
Hi. You're watching Make Thrift Buy. A show
where you send me clothes that you've found on the internet and I try my best to re-create
them. Today's challenge was sent in by chrisk cupcakes, who asked me to re-create this t-shirt
by The Left Bank which retails for 20 to 30 dollars with 18 dollars shipping on top of
that if I wanted to buy it.
So let's go get started.
First, I drew a city skyline shape onto a piece of cardboard with pencil. I cut this
out using scissors. Then I placed this half-way down on a slightly too-large black t-shirt.
I also taped the cardboard onto the shirt with the idea of keeping it in place.
Then I filled a spray bottle with some bleach, put on a pair of gloves for safety, and I
started spraying the t-shirt with the bleach. I didn't really know how much bleach to use,
so I kind of just went for it, spraying the bleach on pretty liberally. I tried to spray
on the most bleach closest to the skyline and less up at the top of the shirt. It slowly
started turning red wherever the bleach was.
I then carefully tried to remove the cardboard and this is where I realized I probably shouldn't
have taped it down. So don't do that.
But anyway, I then gave the shirt a good rinse. Then I chucked the shirt in the washing machine
on its own for a really short cycle. Then I hung it out on the line to dry.
Unfortunately, some of the bleach made it through to the back of the shirt. So I thought,
“Next time I should put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to stop this from happening”.
For some reason, I then totally forgot to do this. I proceeded to repeat the same thing
that I did before, on the back of the t-shirt this time. At least I didn't stick the stencil
down on the shirt this time which made removing the stencil a lot easier.
Now I ended up with these areas where the bleach went really blotchy which I think could
probably be fixed next time by being more careful to do an even spray across the shirt.
Nonetheless, I rinsed the bleach off and I hung it out to dry.
Okay. So the back sucks, but the front is actually pretty alright.
Actually, looking at the original shirt, there's bigger splotches on that shirt too. So, yeah.
I totally did the splotches on purpose?
I then decided to make some of the splotches more obvious, or something. So I mixed up some
paint with a little bit of fabric medium and I started painting blotches onto the back
of the t-shirt. I then took some artistic license and turned this blotch down here into
a UFO. Then somehow that escalated fairly quickly into a full-blown alien attack apocalyse
scene complete with falling asteroids and burning buildings.
So yeah. That happened.
I then decided that I would maybe just not touch the front at all and leave it as it
was. So after setting the paint into the back of the shirt using an iron, the last step
was to cut the arms shorter. As t-shirt material doesn't fray, I simply rolled the sleeves
over twice to cuff them.
[music plays]
So... I'd say you probably can make this yourself and, if I was to do it again, I would remember
to put some cardboard inside the shirt before I spray it with bleach. That was my main problem.
But yeah, for 3 dollars, I'm pretty happy with it. So-
[scissor and zipper sound effects]
But if you wanted the real-deal, then I would suggest checking out Left Bank's website-
the designer who made the original t-shirt. The store's actually run by an independent
designer who hand-makes the stuff themselves and isn't even terribly expensive. So it's
a pretty cool company to go and support if you can afford to.
Although, theirs is missing a crucial alien apocalypse scene on the back. Anyway, if you
enjoyed this episode, then please give me a thumbs up, subscribe to my channel, share
my videos, and keep those awesome suggestions for new challenges coming. I'll see you all
next time.
[outro music]