I’m A Mess And I Know It

You will need:

Bleach (I use thick toilet bleach it's like 80p)

The thing you want to bleach onto (In this case, a tote bag for a friend. usually i thrift old black shirts.) You should do a patch test before any real bleaching -- dab a tiny bit on the inside of a hem somewhere before you commit. I don't show that below because i forgot to do it but you should. You should ALSO iron the thing before you bleach it. So it's flat. Do as I say not as I do etc.

Something to put inside / between your garment and the table (Asda brand weetabix box babyyy)

Paintbrush (Mine is from a multipack from Poundland. I also accidentally left it in bleach last time and it kind of dissolved so I had to cut off the most egregious of the stray bristles.)

Chalk (For snacking) (I'm joking please don't eat the chalk) (I only have big pavement chalk, again, from Poundland, but you can get a good point with a craft knife)

Step one: move the cat

Step two: insert cereal box into / behind the thing you are bleaching.

Step three: chalk on your design. this is the logo of a wine brand i have never tried but i like the snail. It can be super rough or very precise, whichever helps you know where to put your lines.

As you can tell it's easy to move stuff and redo it by just smudging the chalk away, or, worst case scenario, giving it a wash. Though that sucks if you're impatient like me bc you do NOT want to bleach this while it's wet. Once you're happy with your design, smack it around a bunch to take off most of the chalk, so you wind up with a vague outline. I didn't get a pic of this stage but here's what the iasip one looked like:

Step four: Acquire your bleach and put it in the special bleach jar your hosuemates labelled so you would stop drinking normal water out of it. Accept that Nyx hates you for not letting her drink it.

Step five: Go for it man. The bleach is kinda goopy so don't expect it to come out like paint, but it does mean that you can control the line crispness and width quite easily depending on how hard you press the brush down. I find it really helps for stuff like serif fonts.

You can dilute your bleach with water, which can help it get into all the little crevices esp if your fabric is a little bumpy, but do another small patch test before committing to anything on the main piece, because some fabrics absolutely suck up water and your lovely crispy lines will blow out like an old tattoo. don't do it. Unless you want that look, in which case get silly with it

The other weird thing abt it is obviously that you can't see what you painted right away, it takes a couple seconds to show up, so it's a pretty slow process. The fabric will first go darker where you painted, then lighten from orange to a pale yellow over about 30 seconds. DON'T go "this bleach aint shit" and paint over it to make it lighten faster -- overbleaching it can weaken the fabric and make it tear.

Tragic.

Here are some progress shots of the snail! When you're finished, you should wait for it to develop properly, but it depends how light you want it to be. I let the lines sit for a while before doing the details, and then washed it a bit prematurely so they'll stay a little darker. For nice pale yellow you want to wait around an hour.

Step six: drown her

Nice cold water, wash out all the remaining bleach and chalk. I chucked it in the wash for ten minutes because it's a weird shape and size to wash in the sink and I'm a lazy bastard. but handwashing works just as well.

Step seven: revel in your new bootleg merch. You made that. You did that. thrive. go forth and make weird shit.