Hey Lovelies! I love playing around with bleach on clothes. (Yes, I take precautions, don’t worry!). The only thing is I hate the smell of it, so I prefer to do it with all windows open and escape my room after or do it outside. It really depends on the project I’m doing. Have you ever used bleach to alternate clothes?! If you have or not, doesn’t really matter. I’m here to give you a idea what you could do. My brain is already like, I can do this and that and THAT. Yeah, way too many ideas. I really hope I can inspire you as well!

For this DIY you’ll need:
♥ Clothing of choice, but make sure it’s of a natural material like cotton.
♥  (Thick) Bleach.
♥ Plastic bottle with tiny nozzle or brush with a small cup.
♥ Spray Bottle. (Optional)
♥  (Pastel) pencil.
♥ Paper.
♥ Scissors.
♥ Plastic Sheets/Trash bags.

Warning! Make sure you are allowed to work with Bleach, if you are under age, ask your parents. It’s aggressive stuff. Take all precautions needed, like a well ventilated area, gloves etc. Read the label well.

Tutorial Bleach Shirt

First off, is to prepare your clothes, I used a t-shirt. If you bought it new, wash it. There’s always something on there that makes it sorta water resistant and that will make it a bit harder to work with. Let it dry.

Make your design

While your clothes are drying, think of your design. I chose to do various leaves. I drew the shapes on paper and cut those out. But of course, feel free to make any design.

When your shirt is dry, start laying out the paper leaves on your shirt. Make any composition you like and trace these on your shirt with a pastel pencil. I chose pastel since that grabs better on a t-shirt and it will wash out later, I am not sure if graphite will wash out. You can free style your design as well, but for the tutorial it’s easier to explain it this way.

Bleaching

When you are happy with the line art on your shirt. It’s time to start the bleaching process. Make sure to take all the precautions, like wearing gloves, open all windows or work outside etc, protect surfaces and probably most important, put plastic in between the layers of your clothes that you are gonna bleach. You don’t want your design leak through to the other side, right?!

When you’ve done that, fill a small bottle with thick bleach, which has a small nozzle. This makes it easier to make details. Also fill a spray bottle with bleach. Make some test on paper or a scrap piece to see how it comes out the bottle and get the feel of it. If you don’t have any bottles I mentioned, a brush will work as well, just will take a bit longer to trace all the lines.

I sprayed the shirt with bleach first, carefully, just to distress the shirt a bit. This part somehow took longer to bleach for me. Then I started tracing the lines I made with the small nozzled bottle. It might take a bit of practice in the beginning. Also try to make the lines as thin as possible with tracing, they most likely will expand a bit while it works in. For me it took just seconds to see it work, especially when you use fresh bought bleach. Sometimes it will get less strong over time.

You kinda wanna work quickly, once the bleach has done its part, there’s no use to keep it on there longer, it will only damage your clothes. So, when you finish tracing all the lines, make sure all lines are bleached the way you want. Just a small note here; when you use a black t-shirt, those won’t bleach white, those will turn out orange-ish.

Washing

When you are happy with how it looks (it will lighten a bit more after washing and drying). Then it’s time to rinse your shirt. Use cold water and rinse it thoroughly. After that, throw it in the washing machine immediately on a full program. Some say to wash it without any soap, but I tested both ways and it doesn’t really matter.

Drying

When the washing machine is done, all you have to do is to wait for it to dry! I know, waiting is annoying, but just be patient, you can soon show of you own one of a kind t-shirt or other clothes you decided to alternate!

I hope you liked this tutorial! I think this is quite fun to do! Just making your own style of clothes! Who doesn’t want that?! I also made some mistakes with this shirt, one of the leaves is not as detailed, that’s where I started, I figured the lines needed to be thinner by then. Oh well, I still love how mine turned out. And if you decide to make one yourself as well, please show me on Twitter of Instagram, I’d love to see what you create!

Have a wonderful day and I’ll see you next week!

Love
Danielle

PS. if you love those kind of blogs, maybe you’d like to support me on Ko-Fi?! So I can keep making content like this!

// ©2021 Delinlea / Danielle Kaal // You may not reproduce, translate, share, freely distribute or sell this tutorial as your own. Credit to ‘Delinlea’ is appreciated, when you share anything made with this tutorial.