100 Days of School T-Shirt Idea: Star Wars

Well, this was a first for me – designing a t-shirt for my kindergartener’s 100th day of school.  Apparently, it has become all the rage.  We worked hard on our shirt, but we certainly weren’t the only ones.  There were so many cute shirt designs at my son’s school.  Those kiddos families were super creative.  Keep reading to see our Star Wars 100 days of school t-shirt idea.

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The assignment was to put 100 items on a shirt and t-shirt paint was a suggested medium.  Anyway, this is how ours came together.

STEP ONE: GET INSPIRATION

We looked on Pinterest to get our creative juices flowing.  My son, of course, picked light sabers.

STEP TWO: GATHER YOUR MATERIALS

We started with a trip to Michael’s where we got a t-shirt and t-shirt paint pens that I did not even know existed.  Shop Apparel Craft Supplies at Michaels.

STEP THREE: DESIGN THE FRONT OF THE SHIRT

We used a printable iron-on.

I liked the idea of adding lettering and a saying about 100 days.  I considered how I would do my lettering and basically thought I would just end up messing up the shirt, so I turned to my stash of iron on fabric.  I had two sheets left.  This is an iron on fabric that you can just put in your printer and print a photo or anything else you would like onto the fabric, then you can iron it on your shirt.  These I ordered some time ago on Amazon, but you can also find them at Michaels.

Here is my bonus Photoshop trick.

I designed my iron on using a photo from my recent Darth Vader photo shoot that you can see here.  I added the text “100 Days Smarter He Is” under the photo and taught myself a new Photoshop trick.  After I added the text, I converted it to a shape and then selected perspective.  Then I was able to pull the bottom of the text to make it look like the text does in the opening of all the Star Wars movies.  I thought this was a nice touch and I love learning a new trick.

I ironed my iron on on the front of the shirt.  I used the full 8 1/2 x 11 sheet and I probably should have made it smaller.  It was kind of stiff for him to wear, but it was only for one day.

STEP FOUR: DESIGN THE BACK OF THE SHIRT

Jersey Numbers

Then we designed the back of our shirt.  I liked the idea of using 100 like a number on the back of a jersey.  I had some large number stickers that I put on the back of the shirt to use as a pattern.  I also wanted to add two light sabers going through the numbers, so I drew two light sabers on paper and cut them out to add to my pattern.  I taped them to the shirt and the numbers.  Once I had everything in place, I traced around my pattern with a yellow t-shirt paint pen.  When that was dry, I took the light saber patterns off and colored them in with my silver, red and blue, pens.  This took a few coats.  At first I wasn’t sure the silver was going to show up, but after the first coat dries, the second coat looks much brighter.

100 Light Sabers for 100 Days of School

At this point, I let the kids jump in.  They were dying to help.  I showed them how to draw a light saber and they went to work, drawing 100 light sabers.  They did wear themselves out and I went back over their work making the light sabers slightly bigger.  We did silver handles with some red light sabers and blue light sabers.  I let them put them on the front, the back, the sleeves, just where ever they wanted to draw a light saber.  This actually probably helped me quite a bit.  If they hadn’t just jumped in and randomly placed light sabers, I’d probably still be analyzing and over-thinking their placement.

After we wore the shirt, we just hung it in the closet.  I can’t imagine that it would withstand a washing.  The paint might stay on, but I think the iron on would need to be sewed on around the edges.  I haven’t ever tried to wash an iron on, so I don’t know how it would turn out.

This was a fun project.  We bought and used one yellow, two silver, one blue, and one red t-shirt paint pen and used them all.

Pin 100 Days of School T-Shirt Idea here!