A unique family heirloom craft

My side of the family has been doing a Christmas exchange for several years now.  This year, I drew my middle sister's name.  She loves to make things, too, so I thought that I'd make her something special this year.  My mom has a few scrapbooks that her grandmother Kelly put together.  They are full of old photos and hand-painted drawings. Great- grandma Kelly drew a lot of pictures of children and babies.  It is always so much fun to look through the scrapbook.  I took one of these scrapbooks (with Mom's permission, of course) with the thought that maybe I'd preserve the pages somehow.  While that has not been completed, this fun t-shirt project has come to be.

I chose my favorite kid painting from one of the pages of the scrapbook to paint on a t-shirt.  I first photocopied the picture, then placed it on the shirt.  I placed tracing paper underneath it, with the chalky part touching the shirt.  I used a pencil and outlined the drawing.  When both papers were removed, I had the picture ready to paint.  I tried my best to stay as true to the colors as possible, using fabric paint to color it all in.  Instead of squeezing the paint out of the tubes, I used fine paintbrushes to get in all the details.  I found Great-grandma Kelly's signature elsewhere in the book and used that as a guide to sign her name myself.

This is the completed shirt...a treasure that I know she loves.  I hope to do this for others in the family some day.  There are a couple other pictures that I really like in the scrapbook that will be fun to do.  Another idea I had is to do embroidery stitches instead of paint--what do ya think?