DIY: Olympic Team Jerseys

We fully enjoyed our week away as a family on the snowy slopes of Blue Mountain in Collingwood. The conditions were AMAZING, albeit very cold (minus 9 C was the high most days). Over the past 3-4 years my amazing hubby has taught 2 out of the oldest 3 kids to ski and is currently working away on Keekers. Those boys can now out-ski their momma on her snowboard, and start to get “bored” going down the hills, finding side trails and jumps to keep themselves entertained.

Now that we are home we are in full-tilt Olympic fever – since most of the events are airing overnight, our handy dandy computer is recording everything for us so we can watch later and skip over all the commercials (Windows Media FTW!).

I had planned on doing this Olympic team jersey project while we were away, but we were so busy having fun on the hills we didn’t get around to it. It’s super easy and fun and fully customizable! I bought everything from Michaels on sale or with a coupon, so each shirt comes out to less than $5 in the end – now that’s a deal!

The full details and instructions are below. What countries are YOU cheering for?

DIY: Olympic Team Jerseys

Supplies

White t-shirt (washed)
Fabric paints (preferably not the 3D kind) for your country, plus red, yellow, blue, green and black
sponge brushes and regular paint brushes
cardboard (for the template and to go between the shirt layers to prevent the paint bleeding through)
Stencils or templates
Craft xacto knife

Find and print a template of the design you want on your jerseys. Cut out of the paper and place onto the cardboard (cereal boxes work great for this!).

Using a craft xacto knife (best choice – they allow to cut good corners on finer designs! But if your design isn’t too complicated, you could get away with a regular xacto knife), cut the outline of the design into your template. Punch out the remainder and set aside.

Place the other cardboard between the front and back layer of the shirt. Position the template and start painting.

We chose to do a maple leaf on the back – two kids wanted red, The Boy wanted gold – Go for gold, Canada!

Use a dabbing motion instead of spreading and hold the fabric tightly between your fingers to keep it from shifting from under the template.

Allow to dry about 4 hours before doing the front of the shirt.

On the front of the shirt we put Canada – I outlined the words in a black sharpie marker so the kids could easily fill in the letters after with paint (and that saved me from the painstaking time of cutting out another stencil :D).

This was my favourite part – the Olympic rings!Dip a mason jar lid ring into the paint and press onto the shirt front.

Allow to dry, wear, and wash after 72 hours.

Since we have some deep family roots in both the Netherlands and Poland, and are cheering them on during the Olympics, we decided to add their flags to the sleeves of the shirt as well.