DIY Custom Shirts Using Freezer Paper

I have been DYING to start making my own shirts.  My head is stuffed full of cool sayings and designs.....but I've been unsure of the best way to go about executing them

I really love all the cool shirts people make using iron on vinyl....but since I don't have a Silhouette Cameo or any other kind of cutting machine for that matter (This busy broad is also a poor broad) I haven't really felt like I should bother breaking into the world of vinyl.  Pretty much too depressing for me without a machine haha

So I decided to finally give the freezer paper technique of making shirts for an idea I had for my niece Elsa's birthday

If you follow me at all, you might remember that she had a camping themed party....so sticking with the theme I decided to make a "Happy Camper" shirt

First off I decided to use up some pink flower iron on letters I had left over from making the little girls flower girl shirts for the rehearsal

Then came the camper portion

I found an imagine online and printed it out.  Then I traced it with sharpie onto the freezer paper

I marked with an X what was to be cut out.  

CAREFULLY cut the entire image with an exacto knife as well as the X out areas....but be sure to keep the pieces..you're going to need those

Take the piece of freezer paper and iron it onto the shirt shiny side down.  It's the shiny stuff that makes it stick

Then position those little pieces you saved and iron those on too

Take your fabric paint and cover the whole area using a foam brush.  I did about 3 coats to get it even

Peel off the outside

And then the little pieces

Not perfect...but not terrible for a first attempt at a new technique.  You can see spots where I didn't have the paper ironed down good enough so paint seeped under.  Next time I will do a better job of checking that.  But once you put the shirt on a cute kid I think it  doesn't even matter....right?