I'm not goona pay THAT!!

While out shopping with a friend at Old Navy I saw a really cool black sweatshirt that said "watch your back," on the front, and a skeleton's chest on the back. I knew the boys would like it. Then I checked the price tag. It was $30. Okay, yeah. All the boys would like it. I'm not gonna pay $90 plus tax for three sweatshirts. Later while shopping with Jonny, we saw a hoodie, again with the skeleton chest printed on it. This one was even cooler than the first one I saw because the hood zipped closed and became a mask. Of course, as I'd thought Jonny loved it! I looked at the price tag. It was $15. Quickly adding up in my mind how much it would cost to buy three, I decided that $45 was still too much. However sitting on a table next to them were some plain black sweat shirts for $5 each. "This I can do," I thought.
I came home, googled an image of a skeleton's chest, and found a free clip art image. I printed it, and then cut it into four pieces, enlarged each piece on my printer and taped them together. This became my pattern. After laying freezer paper over the pattern and tracing, I had a stencil, which could be ironed to the sweatshirt. Then using acrylic paint and textile medium, I stenciled the design. It took about 5 coats of of paint, drying with a hair drier in between coats before the image was white enough. To make each shirt a little different, i stenciled a heart under the ribs for the second shirt, and blended some light green into the ribs of the third shirt so that they looked slighly moldy! Mission accomplished for $15.00.