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Friday, April 15, 2011

Blues Clues Campaign for Office

My third Princess ran for Student Body President this week. I thought I would share her campaign since it was really cute. I will show you what we did to make the shirts.


She used a "Blues Clues" theme. The school puts all candidates on a red or blue team to be more like a real political campaign. So, she was placed on the "blue" team.


I found the t-shirts on clearance at WalMart for 3 shirts for $2. We got some x-ray film and made a stencil. One of the girls did the first shirt on her own and said it was taking forever and called asking for help. I used a razor cutter to cut out the stencil that we traced on the x-ray film using a Sharpie marker. I cut it out on my self-healing quilting mat.


Once the stencil was cut out, we taped it on top of the t-shirts. We placed a cardboard in the t-shirt to keep the paint from going through to the back of the shirt. After the first paint job we placed aluminum foil on the cardboard and changed it out after each shirt to keep the paint from the cardboard getting on the new shirt. The stencil can be made into anything. You can get x-ray film using your old x-rays or you can ask your local hospital if they have some old x-rays or flubbed film you can have. Mine is clear but you can use any type of x-ray plastic for quilt or painting stencils.



We used sponge brushes to paint the paw print onto the shirt using the stencil. If they were going to wear the shirt more than once, I would have used acrylic paint but since it is a "one time" wear, we used the schools tempura paint to keep the cost down.



We hung them out to dry outside and when they were dry, they used permanent markers to write the letters, sign their names on the back, and to put what they were running for on the shirt.



They wrote a cute skit using the "Blues Clues" theme. They posted blue paw prints as "clues" as to which team to vote for all over the school. They put their names on some and "Vote Blue" and other slogans on others. They had some banners they posted as well.


I think the "Blues Clues" thing could be used with a family reunion skit or a youth or scout skit etc. The shirts were fairly easy and could be reused over and over.


I video taped the skit and the team did well planning and putting it on. It was fun to see them work together to come up with a theme and put together the skit.



We found a green striped shirt at a second hand store that we used for "Steve" and they brought in a "blue" mailbox for "Mail time," we used a large drawing pad for his "handy, dandy notebook" and they had a "thinking chair." I'll let you know next week how it goes...



Princess number four is running for Senator next week. We were up late making posters for her campaign tonight. Oh the fun!

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