Gallery Wrap Old T-Shirts!

Viraj — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:11:57 +0000

I’m a big fan of those stupid t-shirts sold by the likes of bustedtees, shirt.woot, and threadless, although I generally couldn’t pull off wearing most of them for the following reasons:

Feel like I’d offend people
Horrific color choices
Novelty would wear off after first use
Ugly T-Shirt
Shirt’s never available in my size

I also sometimes buy said shirts only to find out they fall into one of the aforementioned categories, leaving them sitting in my closet feeling neglected. Because I can’t get myself to buy art/decoration as it’s generally meaningless/expensive, I had an idea last fall to gallery wrap shirts, effectively turning them into prints.

While there are obvious questions as to the quality of the gallery wrapping t-shirts, I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome of my little experiment.

For only the cost of a $5 box frame (with tax- buyable at local arts/crafts store) and t-shirt, you can have a rather awesome piece of artwork.

Step 1: Get Materials

If you get a similar kind of box frame, I recommend keeping the cardboard support that comes with it. It provides holes for hanging, and more importantly, helps strech the “canvas”.

Step 2: Cut out front panel of shirt

I recommend centering the box frame underneath the shirt to figure out where to cut. Some shirts may not work well if the seams are visible.

Cut off the bottom so you have just enough cloth to work with.

Step 3: Tape the shirt to the box frame

Depending on where you want the folds of the shirt to be (I chose top/bottom), start taping the shirt to the frame with some heavy duty tape, keeping the shirt as tight and wrinkle free as possible.

Step 4: Put cardboard support back in

If you don’t have cardboard support, I suggest constructing something similar with cardboard, or just taping the shirt down. If you tape the shirt down directly, add another layer of canvas under the shirt to prevent light getting through.

And the finished product:

That’s it, and it takes about 15-20 minutes!

Some other box frames:

Room Awesomeness

Viraj — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:24:53 +0000

I finally put up the final piece of my room “art”. For those who don’t know (so almost everyone), after moving into my new place, I was pressed for something to decorate my room with. I needed to follow up my room in Champaign (which was pretty awesome, not gonna lie), with something even more spectacular. My roommate gave me an idea of a wall mural, and I remember seeing those awesome Kara Walker murals at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. While I didn’t want to come home to come home to the racial and sexual implications of those murals, I thought kids playing would be relaxing.

The stuff over my bed wasn’t really in my plans and is likely to change.

By the way, I don’t have my digital camera with me, so these were taken by my laptop (the process of which seemed more difficult than making these murals…). My room really looks less crappy than what appears in these photos…

Ellipses » art

Gallery Wrap Old T-Shirts!

Room Awesomeness